A masterpiece is, by definition, a difficult act to follow. In the case of Sebastian Faulks, the final instalment in his French trilogy was always going to have a hard time measuring up to the sublime, luminous prose of Birdsong.
Charlotte Gray sees the action move from the muddy, bloody trenches of World War I to the hotbed of betrayal and mistrust that was Vichy France. So far, so good, for France is, after all, Faulks' forte. But if you are going to name your book after its main character, you had better make sure she is as memorable and deserving of such an honour as, say, a Jane Eyre or an Emma. Unfortunately, Charlotte Gray does not come close, rarely rising above the two-dimensional and the wooden. Perhaps the most apposite part of the title lies in its unintended allusion to the dreary and the drab.
Indeed, it is difficult to believe at times that we are reading a work by the author of Birdsong. The ham-fisted descriptions of sex ('she felt as if the organs of her stomach had mysteriously liquefied'), the wavering between Mills and Boon-esque romance, psychological exploration and page-turning thriller, the faux Proustian echoes and even - amazingly - his inversion of the rudimentary show-don't-tell rule of novel-writing all make for an unsatisfying whole, brimful of aesthetic dissonance. Faulks, it seems, is trying too hard to be all things to all readers.
Too often the twists and turns of the plot betray the heavy hand of the puppeteer; characters are black or white, good or evil and act less out of any believable motivation than out of convenience in supplying the next kink in the heroine's all-too-long and winding road.
Faulks knows his historical stuff, but whereas in Birdsong he wove it into the drama seamlessly, here great gobs of facts spill out in stilted and expository dialogue.
Charlotte Gray is a young Scottish girl who, on a train to war-torn London, just happens to bump into a couple of golf-playing, old-chapping mandarins from the hush-hush 'G Section', who decide they can put Gray's perfect French to good use. Meantime, she falls in love with a fighter pilot - world weary, indestructible but damaged goods - who goes missing over France.