Book Club Discussion Questions
Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
Charlotte Gray begins in 1942. London is blacked out, while France suffers under a much greater darkness with half the country under Nazi occupation and the other half a "Free" Zone led by a French puppet government. After a brief but intense love affair with an RAF pilot whose plane disappears over France, Charlotte Gray, a volatile young Scottish woman, contrives to go to France and join the Resistance so that she might search for him. Her Resistance work moves her in ways she had hardly expected, and soon she decides to stay on under her assumed identity, finding that the struggle for the country's fate is intimately linked to her own battle to take control of her life.
For discussion: Charlotte Gray
- Why does Charlotte so deeply identify with France? What tradition does the Loiseau family represent to her? Where, and in whom, does Charlotte recognize this tradition during her undercover work in France?
- Why does Dr. Burch, the psychiatric examiner, mark Charlotte down as "T. C. by 1/2" (too clever by half) [p. 82]? Is this meant as a compliment or a criticism? Would you say it is an accurate description of Charlotte? Does it square with Daisy's view of Charlotte as "unstable" and "vulnerable" [p. 95]?
- Cannerley, in England, feels "frightened" by the political decisions he is being compelled to put into force. "Everyone he knew had made an accommodation with the war, with the demands on their lives of a national emergency, and it seemed to him that he had been drawn into the wrong compromise" [p. 150]. Julien, in France, sees "a chain of compromise and inertia, at no single point perceptible as choice in moral colors, had had in the end a cumulative effect" [p. 154]. What accommodations and compromises have the following characters made: Cannerley, Bernard, M. Levade, Sir Oliver, Gerd Lindemann? At what point, and in what characters, can the choices be said to be positively evil?
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- How does the author develop themes of identity and belonging throughout the narrative?
- What role does the setting play in shaping the characters' decisions and relationships?
- Discuss how the ending reframes the events of the story. Were you surprised?
Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Vintage.
Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.