By Sebastian Faulks
Maybe it is a stretch hard to follow, but when I closed the last page on Charlotte Gray, I thought of A Tale of Two Cities. Following Charlotte Gray's story takes us on a path from her home in Scotland, to blitz-ravaged London in 1942, where driven by a personal search, she volunteers to risk her life in Nazi Occupied France. Hardly a dissipated Sydney Carton driven to put his life on the line by his love for Lucy Manette, but Charlotte Gray's motive to find the love of her life, Peter Gregory, a RAF pilot missing in France, is as perilous and undaunted. What is a closer parallel in the two novels is the similarity between Dicken's portrayal of the degradation of humanity in the Reign of Terror, and Faulks' view of a French society surrendered to the terrors of Nazism in the darkest hours of World War II.
Faulks draws us on through the intertwining strands of his novel with an unusual and distinctive talent for involving the reader with a careful revealing of character by their actions and words. Charlotte Gray is someone worth knowing. We see her through the eyes of those she meets as someone of considerable beauty and intelligence seldom out of control by her Scottish reserve. Only in her need to love and be loved by Peter Gregory does she cast caution aside.
As Charlotte Gray takes on the role of Dominique Guilbert when she parachutes into a field in France, her ability to lead a double life is tested as severely as the risk of increasing involvement in The Resistance. Her job as a courier takes her down dark lanes, village streets guarded by suspicious eyes, and on trains where her identity is constantly under surveillance.
Dominique becomes a "loose cannon" when she refuses to keep a rendezvous with plane meant to take her from the danger of Petain's Vichy France to the safety of England. She not only decides to honor a personal vow to find Peter Gregory, but without fully realizing it becomes committed to the cause of The Resistance to the invading Germans, and their French sympathizers.
All but cut loose from contact with her British superiors, Dominique has put Charlotte Gray's existence on hold. Her contact in the small, French village, "Octave" is an architect, Julien Levade. He hides Dominique with his father, a once famous painter, now "slopping paint on canvas" in a rundown, classic countryside manor, The Domaine. There is once again the thought of Faulks as a true inheritor of Dicken's ability to bring a larger meaning to a novel by expanding on his cast of characters, and bringing their separate stories into focus.
The novelist is also a scholar at work providing the reader with meaningful details and historical background that makes this more than an intrguing tale of adventure. An unwavering look at "the Jewish problem" is portrayed by the fate of the Duguays, and their sons, Andre and Jacob. I found it hard to keep from averting my eyes from the pages of the novel, as the horrors of the holding barracks at Drancy, and the cattle train transport of the doomed to Polish death camps is described.
Faulks' novel begins as a love story, takes the reader on a fascinating journey through two war-torn countries, then concludes as a love story. It is an achievement that puts the odyssey of an intrepid Scotswoman in the company of other great story tellers.
Review by Don Mac Brown
Faulks draws us on through the intertwining strands of his novel with an unusual and distinctive talent for involving the reader with a careful revealing of character by their actions and words. Charlotte Gray is someone worth knowing. We see her through the eyes of those she meets as someone of considerable beauty and intelligence seldom out of control by her Scottish reserve. Only in her need to love and be loved by Peter Gregory does she cast caution aside.
As Charlotte Gray takes on the role of Dominique Guilbert when she parachutes into a field in France, her ability to lead a double life is tested as severely as the risk of increasing involvement in The Resistance. Her job as a courier takes her down dark lanes, village streets guarded by suspicious eyes, and on trains where her identity is constantly under surveillance.
Dominique becomes a "loose cannon" when she refuses to keep a rendezvous with plane meant to take her from the danger of Petain's Vichy France to the safety of England. She not only decides to honor a personal vow to find Peter Gregory, but without fully realizing it becomes committed to the cause of The Resistance to the invading Germans, and their French sympathizers.
All but cut loose from contact with her British superiors, Dominique has put Charlotte Gray's existence on hold. Her contact in the small, French village, "Octave" is an architect, Julien Levade. He hides Dominique with his father, a once famous painter, now "slopping paint on canvas" in a rundown, classic countryside manor, The Domaine. There is once again the thought of Faulks as a true inheritor of Dicken's ability to bring a larger meaning to a novel by expanding on his cast of characters, and bringing their separate stories into focus.
The novelist is also a scholar at work providing the reader with meaningful details and historical background that makes this more than an intrguing tale of adventure. An unwavering look at "the Jewish problem" is portrayed by the fate of the Duguays, and their sons, Andre and Jacob. I found it hard to keep from averting my eyes from the pages of the novel, as the horrors of the holding barracks at Drancy, and the cattle train transport of the doomed to Polish death camps is described.
Faulks' novel begins as a love story, takes the reader on a fascinating journey through two war-torn countries, then concludes as a love story. It is an achievement that puts the odyssey of an intrepid Scotswoman in the company of other great story tellers.
Review by Don Mac Brown
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