Shelf Control #104 – 29/05/2026
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Shelf Control is a meme run by Lisa at Bookshelf Fantasies. It’s a celebration of the unread books on our shelves! The idea is to pick a book you own but haven’t read and write a post about it (suggestions: include what it’s about, why you want to read it, and when you got it), and link up.
If you want to read more about the Shelf Control feature, check out Lisa’s introductory post.
Today’s Shelf Control is a bit of a change-up on other recent Shelf Control features. My last two were non-fiction reads. However, if that’s not your bag and you prefer historical fiction, stick with me. Today’s feature is a daring WW2 historical fiction novel with a female lead.
Intrigued? Let’s take a look!
Charlotte Gray – Sebastian Faulks
Genre: Historical fiction
Pages: 495
Audience: Adult
Publisher: Penguin
Publication Date: 13 Apr 2013
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 operations group and to search for her lover, an English airman called Peter Gregory, 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 enthusiastic, 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 Charlotte’s friendship with both men, Faulks opens up the theme of false memory and of paradises―both national and personal―that appear irredeemably lost. 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.
My Thoughts
I love the sound of Charlotte Gray. I’m particularly intrigued by the female lead. A lot of action in WW2 fiction often takes place by male counterparts. However, in Charlotte Gray, a woman is stepping into danger.
Often there is a hidden side to the war in that the lives of families left behind are forgotten. Their names and stories aren’t told on memorials, and yet the war impacted them just as much as their partners, husbands and fathers who are sent away.
I’ve enjoyed similar fiction before, the most recent and reminiscent of this setting is All The Light We Cannot See. I enjoyed that setting and the personal stories that take place on this wider narrative. Now, I can only hope for the same in Charlotte Gray.
I can’t wait to check out Charlotte Gray and I hope you’re as excited to read it as I am. I’m not sure whether I’m going to pick this up as a standalone or whether I’ll pick up the earlier books first. I’ll decide nearer the time!
Thanks for reading today’s Shelf Control. Are you interested in reading with me? If you like the sound of it, grab a copy and read with me!
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