In 1942, Charlotte Gray, a young scottish woman, goes to Occupied France on a dual mission
- officially, to run an apparently simple errand for a British special operations group & unofficially, 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 & its agony in `the black years`. Here is the full range of collaboration, from the tacit to the enthusiastic, as well as examples of extraordinary courage & 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 & its powerful narrative scenes of harrowing public events, Charlotte Gray is a worthy successor to Birdsong.