Ordinary people do amazing things. (Charlotte Gray - Sebastian Faulks)

Member Name: Bryn Pearson

Product:	Charlotte Gray - Sebastian Faulks
Date:	12/09/02 (188 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: amazing story

Disadvantages: none

I was expecting this to be an intelligently written second world war thriller. I was surprised by the degree to which this is not in fact a thriller novel. It is however, brilliantly devised and written and very much about the second world war.

The setting is largely France, dealing with French responses to the occupation - unlike the image created by 'allo allo', most people were not in the resistence, many collaborated, including the then Vichy government. In war time, people often do terrible things, and this book does not shy away from exploring the inhumanity that war encourages.

The book follows the lives of a range of characters - centered on Charlotte Gray.

Charlotte - a young Scottish woman trying to do her bit for the war effort. Posessed of excellent French language skills, she ends up working for some covert government outfit. She falls in love with an airman. Charlotte goes to France to carry messages, but stays to suport the resistence and the friends she has made there. She is also looking for her lost airman.

Peter Gregory - airman and Charlotte's lover. He's a grim man with something of a death wish, and as a reader you never really get close to him, although for Charlotte's sake you have to worry about his fate.

Julien Levade - part Jewish son of a painter, he's a member of the french resistence and a really likeable character. He strives to do the right thing and has a real passion for life.

Andre and Jacob - two young Jewsih boys who's parents are sent to camps at the begninning of the book. Some of the local people hide them, but others are keen to expose them for their own ends. These children are innocent pawns in a terrible game and are the main method through which the darker side of occupied France is explored.

There are two features which, for me, made this book utterly compelling. Firstly, it emphasises the ordinariness of the people caught up in th
e war- they weren't supermen and superwomen, their motives would have been complex and odd, they would have made mistakes. Secondly, I like the way in which Faulks resists conventional notions of plot - the high octaine drama littered with vital coincidences and crossed paths does not happen. It is an extraordinary tale of ordinary people, and that makes this book very powerful reading indeed.

Summary: