Charlotte Gray [Paperback]

Sebastian Faulks (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Vintage Books/Random House (1999)
• ISBN-10: 009944206X
• ISBN-13: 978-0099442066
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (66 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,588,240 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best description of the real French resistance, May 5, 2001

By 

Rene J. Defourneaux "The Winking Fox" (Indianapolis, Indiana USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Charlotte Gray: A Novel (Hardcover)

I read Charlotte Gray with great interest. At time it was for me so emotionally upsetting I had to stop reading for a while until I recovered my composure. As a former SOE agent, having been dropped in France during WWII I was faced with some very similar conditions. It brought back to my mine some forgotten incidents. This book may be fiction, but it describes very accurately the real French Resistance and not the one described by Hollywood, or those who wished they had been involved. I was so disappointed with the attitude and the behavior of my former countrymen that I did not return to France for forty years. Charlotte Gray explains why very clearly.

Rene J. Defourneaux, Major US Army (Ret.) Author of The Winking Fox, and of The Tracks of the Fox.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good, could have been better, August 29, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Charlotte Gray: A Novel (Hardcover)

Like most of the other reviewers here I found that Charlotte Gray didn't come close to Birdsong - but maybe it is unfair to compare the too. Charlotte is a good read. I came to care deeply about all of the characters and was eager to see what would happen to them. The one part of the story that rings false is the love story between Charlotte and Peter. Much like the granddaughter in Birdsong, this plot seemed contrived as a way to tell the rest of the story. Faulks is at his best describing life in "Free" France and the people who lived there. His prose brings the landscape and even the smells to life. From anyone else this would have probably been considered a wonderful book, maybe it's just that from Faulks we've come to expect a bit more.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sebastian Faulks Is A Marvelous Writer, February 22, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Charlotte Gray: A Novel (Hardcover)

I must say that I'm dismayed by several of the reviews that I've read here. The general consensus is that Birdsong is Faulks masterpiece and anything that is written and read afterward by Faulks must measure up to this. Fortunately, I've not read Birdsong so I'm not predisposed toward an opinion of Faulks. However, after reading Charlotte Gray, I will read Birdsong because this man can write like few others around. His ability to weave a story leaves no doubt in my mind that this is a writer who has extraordinary talent. Charlotte Gray was a very plausible story and so multi-leveled that I fail to understand how someone could not like it. Certainly it is not a profound masterpiece with universal insights that will enrich the minds of generations of readers. But it is a very well plotted story with a ton of information that very few people that are still alive today would know about Vichy France and the lives of ordinary people both in England and France that it affected. And, Charlotte Gray is an ordinary person in many respects which some of the reviewers fail to remember. What do they expect that all women who helped out in the war effort did superhuman tasks and that only the bravest or craziest are worth writing about? Get real people, most of the heroes and heroines are largely unimaginative people whom you wouldn't pay much attention to you if you knew them! Faulks has done an admirable job telling a story that's been told many times before but with a decidedly different point of view. He draws you into his characters and makes you want to know what is going to happen to them. This is a page turner that will leave any thinking person with more than they started with by the book's end. He has nothing to be ashamed of with Charlotte Gray and has an enthusiastic fan that will relish reading his Birdsong.