Featured Reading Guide
Sebastian Faulks
In 1942, Charlotte Gray, a young scottish woman, goes to Occupied France on a dual mission: to run an apparently simple errand for a British special oeprations group and to search for her lover, an English airman who has gone missing in action. In the small town of Lavaurette, Sebastian Faulks presents a microcosm of France and its agony in ‘the black years’. Here is the full range of collaboration, from the tacit to the enthusistic, as well as examples of extraordinary courage and altruism. Through the local resistance chief Julien, Charlotte meets his father, a Jewish painter whose inspiration…
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Sebastian Faulks worked as a journalist for 14 years before taking up writing books full time in 1991. He is the author of A Trick of Light , The Girl at the Lion D’Or , A Fool’s Alphabet , The Fatal Englishman , Birdsong , Charlotte Gray , On Green Dolphin Street and, most recently, Human Traces .
topAbout the Book
In 1942, Charlotte Gray, a young scottish woman, goes to Occupied France on a dual mission: to run an apparently simple errand for a British special oeprations group and to search for her lover, an English airman who has gone missing in action. In the small town of Lavaurette, Sebastian Faulks presents a microcosm of France and its agony in ‘the black years’. Here is the full range of collaboration, from the tacit to the enthusistic, as well as examples of extraordinary courage and altruism. Through the local resistance chief Julien, Charlotte meets his father, a Jewish painter whose inspiration has failed him. In a series of shocking narrative climaxes in which the full extent of French collusion in the Nazi holocaust is delineated, Faulks brings the story to a resolution of redemptive love. In the delicacy of its writing, the intimacy of its characterisation and its powerful narrative scenes of harrowing public events, Charlotte Gray is a worthy successor to Birdsong .
topSebastian Faulks interview/review
- You introduced many people to the First World War. Many people thought perhaps a lot about Second World War but very little about the First World War particularly the tunnels. Was that something you before you started the book you set out to do you thought it would be a curious setting?
Yes, the First World War was slightly a paradox in the way people knew about it in this country. So far, as it was not much written about until the late 20s and then you get a lot of a high quality officer’s memoirs. Then it seemed to fall really rather out of the public memory, public consciousness because of the reticence of the people who have been in it who were traumatized and did not want to talk about it and so on. And it of course was immediately followed by the Second World War. You say it was right for rediscovery and reintroduction. But any sort of half way story profoundly familiar with all these events they never have gone away. So as a novelist you are trading a fine line because you don’t want to bore people with things they already know about but on the other hand you don’t want to underestimate the level of public ignorance. My way of dealing with this was to reimagine in very direst terms the Battle of Somme, the first day of the Battle of Somme, there is nothing sideways or bleak about that. It is the biggest battle, the biggest day and so on. I also thought that if I gonna take people over this terrain which is very head on and will be known to something. I have to tell them something that they did not know. That really nobody knew.
topStarting Points for Discussion
- How do the echoes of World War I resonate throughout the action of Charlotte Gray? How are the main characters affected by it?
- How effectively does Faulks depict his female protagonist? Is the character of Charlotte Gray credible as a young woman of her era?
- Charlotte’s decision to go to France is initially fuelled by romantic motives – to save the land she so fondly remembers and to ‘shock Gregory into an increase of feeling’. How do her motives change and what compels her to stay in France as long as she does?
- The novel is written in the third-person narrative, which means the action unfolds through the eyes of many different characters – for example nearly all of the
passages involving the Duguay boys are written from a child’s viewpoint. How does this heighten the effect of the novel on the reader?
- Towards the end of the novel, Charlotte and her father are reconciled when he acknowledges that, as a child, he crushed her with the weight of his wartime memories. How does Faulks handle the notion of the loss of innocence and what evidence can you find of characters becoming hardened by their experiences?
- The author seems to suggest German Nazism was in part a mere catalyst to an uprising of discontent and nationalism amongst the French. Compare the depiction of the French collaborators with that of the Germans in the novel.
Other Books by Sebastian Faulks
A Fool’s Alphabet
The events of Pietro Russell’s life are told in 26 chapters. From A-Z each …
A Week in December
London, the week before Christmas, 2007. Over seven days we follow the lives…
Birdsong
Set before and during the great war, Birdsong captures the drama of that era…
Suggested Further Reading
- Atonement ~ Ian McEwan
- Five Quarters of the Orange ~ Joanne Harris
- The Regeneration Trilogy ~ Pat Barker
- Pursuit of Happiness ~ Douglas Kennedy
- Enigma ~ Robert Harris
- The English Patient ~ Michael Ondaatje