Charlotte Gray (novel)

All you want to know about Charlotte Gray (novel)

This article is about the 1999 novel. For the 2001 film, see Charlotte Gray (film).
Charlotte Gray  

First edition cover
Author Sebastian Faulks
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Genre(s) War novel
Publisher Random House Trade
Publication date February 1999
Media type Print (Hardback)
Pages 399 pp (first edition, hardback)
ISBN ISBN 0-375-50169-X (first edition, hardback)

Charlotte Gray is a 1999 book by Sebastian Faulks and completes his loose trilogy of books about France with an account of the adventures of a young Scotswoman who becomes involved with the French resistance during the Second World War. It is set in Vichy France during World War II. The story is thought to be based on the exploits of Nancy Wake, codenamed the white mouse, a member of the resistance in war time France and Pearl Cornioley, a British secret service agent.


Contents

Plot summary

In 1942, a young Scots woman, Charlotte Gray, travels to London to take a job as a medical receptionist for a Harley Street doctor. On the train she talks to two men sharing her compartment, and one of them - who works for one of the British secret service agencies at the time - gives her his card. Despite the war, social life in London is in full swing and the attractive, intelligent girl soon meets up with an airman, Peter Gregory. The temporary nature of life at the time is epitomised when she quickly loses her virginity and also her heart to him. The intensity of the romance is heightened when Gregory is sent on a mission over France and news comes back to Charlotte that he didn't return and listed as missing in action.

Charlotte spent much of her childhood in France and speaks the language fluently - a talent that the secret service wishes to exploit in its effort to support the French Resistance. Charlotte decides to throw in her job - which she has no talent for anyway as the doctor informs her - and joins a Special Operations Executive (SOE)* training course. Once it has schooled her in methods of interrogation, dyed her hair a mousy brown and replaced her fillings, Charlotte is parachuted into France to complete a specified mission. But instead of doing her job and heading home, she sets out to find Gregory's whereabouts.

She assists at a parachute drop but then settles down as housekeeper to an ageing and no longer inspired painter, father of her main resistance contact. Over time she comes to understand him in a way she never had understood her own father. Both the painter and Charlotte's father fought in the First World War and bear lasting physical and psychological scars. She also helps to conceal two Jewish children, André and Jacob, after their parents are arrested and deported, and as 1942 progresses we learn about the steadily growing oppression of the Jews in France with complicity by the Vichy French government. The painter is interviewed about his Jewish ancestry, and when he stays silent, his estranged son denounces him in order to save the two little boys. The painter is then packed off to the prison camp/transfer station in Drancy, France (just outside Paris) where Charlotte manages to get a message to him, explaining his son's actions, just before he dies of pneumonia. She misses the gut wrenching scene of the two boys being taken from Drancy and shuttled like cattle to their deaths at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. Although Charlotte has faith that Peter Gregory is still alive, she cannot trace him and so in 1943 comes home. Here, she is reconciled with her father. Later, Peter Gregory manages to escape with the aid of the Resistance, returns to England and is reunited with Charlotte.

In the book Faulks explores loyalty and survival under unprecedented circumstances. When he speaks of fidelity and conflicting passions, he is not just referring to Charlotte's love of her missing man but of the occupation by the Nazis that turned the French against each other as well as against the Jews - thousands of whom were deported and murdered during the war.

  • The SOE in France included a number of women (who were often recruited from the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry); F Section alone sent 39 female agents into the field, of whom 13 did not return.

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

A film based on the book was produced in 2001. It stars Cate Blanchett and is directed by Gillian Armstrong.

Notice

The author received the Bad Sex in Fiction Award 1998 for this book.

References

v • d • e
Works by Sebastian Faulks
Novels

A Trick of the Light (1984) · The Girl at the Lion d'Or (1989) · A Fool's Alphabet (1992) · Birdsong (1993) · Charlotte Gray (1998) · On Green Dolphin Street (2001) · Human Traces (2005) · Engleby (2007) · Devil May Care (2008)

Non-fiction

The Faltal Englishman (1996) · Pistache (2006)

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