Commemorating Armistice Week
Having seen the film based on this book last winter, I wanted to reread the novel to compare them. The film, directed by Gillian Armstrong and starring the luminous Cate Blanchett had a haunting atmosphere, emphasized by the landscape and colors. The movie focuses on the personal stories, skimming over the airplanes and spy school details, as well as compressing relationships. It also has a much less ambiguous ending than the book.
Like his masterpiece, Birdsong, Faulks concentrates on how war affects ordinary individuals, this time World War 2. The title character is a young Scotswoman who goes to London to find work in the early years of the war. There, she falls into a brief but passionate affair with an RAF pilot, Peter Gregory. Because of her fluency in French, she is recruited by a British government agency to be a courier to the French Resistance. When Gregory is shot down in a mission over France, she decides to stay on in that country after her assignment to look for him. Lodging in the small village of Lavaurette, Charlotte continues to help the Resistance, headed by Julian Levade and also becomes involved with the hiding of 2 little Jewish boys, whose parents have been rounded up. The boys, Andre and little brother Jacob, were endearing and what happens to them is heartwrenching. Faulks surpasses himself in describing their outcome poignantly without sentimentality, which makes it all the more powerful.
The main thing I took from this second reading, was that the person you love at one point in your life may not be suitable at another. Experiences can change a person to such a degree that their outlook and requirements demand something else from a relationship that an existing one cannot provide. It doesn’t invalidate the relationship or mean the feelings were any less deep that they appeared, it just means it doesn’t fit the mindset anymore. This was an unsettling revelation. The first time around I was tense, worrying about the characters, but since I knew what happened to them now, I looked more at the layers of interactions and what they meant.
The novel’s main theme seemed to be change, not only in the sacrifices and betrayals of war, but how it suspends ‘real life’ and prevents it from being the same once real life resumes again. It’s not often that I have a completely different experience in reading a book a second time, but with Charlotte Gray, I did. Obviously, that says something about the book, or me, or both.
Random House 1998 399 pp. ISBN 0-375-50169-X
“The main thing I took from this second reading, was that the person you love at one point in your life may not be suitable at another. Experiences can change a person to such a degree that their outlook and requirements demand something else from a relationship that an existing one cannot provide.”
How beautifully put and thought-provoking.
Second readings can be so very different. The worst thing, I find, is when you go back to a beloved book you read as a child and think hmmm, so what? Perhaps rereading books is a little like what you say above: that some can speak to you so emotionally or fully at some parts of your life, but not at another. Which doesn’t invalidate the the powerful experience of reading them the first time (or, in some cases, when you don’t like something at all when young and suddenly it grips you when you are older.)
What a lovely review, Jackie. And you’re not alone, as Rosy says, in rereading something only to find it quite different this time round!
RosyB raises a really interesting point: is the test of a great book that re-reading prompts a different, deeper response or can an initial reading that provokes a strong reaction, still be enough to establish a great book even if later readings leave you wondering what it was that made it so important the first time round?
It is easy to say that it has to get better the more often you read it, but I’ve read some books just once that never leave me from that first reading, whether I go back or not. And I’m not sure I could say which type means more to me.
I have only ever read Birdsong. Sometimes books make you want to devour the rest of the writer’s output, but on this occasion I was wary of reading anything else by Faulks. I’ve always wanted to read this though, although I haven’t seen the film. This review makes me want to read this book, but also to re-read Birdsong which I haven’t read again for fear of it not living up to that first reading.
I also agree with RosyB when she compares books and reading to your comment about relationships changing as people change. For example, I read I Capture The Castle years ago, when I was about ten and I adored it. I still re-read it every now and again because it has become like an old friend, a comfort blanket and it speaks to me now in a way it didn’t when I was young. However a friend read it earlier this year and it didn’t enchant her the same way. Perhaps, without that earlier reading I would no love it as I do.
For those who enjoy this book, and Birdsong, another Faulks book (the only one I have read all the way through so far) is The Girl at The Lion d’Or. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it to you all.