Charlotte Gray by Sebastian Faulks AND Therese Raquin by Emile Zola

I’ve chosen this time to write about two books for reasons I shall go into later. Firstly though the Emile Zola I read was a Penguin ‘Red’ classic, a series of books which supports AIDS charities around the world. Please look them up at http://www.penguinclassics.co.uk/static/minisites/red/index.html and buy some, it’s all in a good cause.

Now a quick synopsis of each book. 

Charlotte Gray is the story of the title character and her activities during the war. Charlotte becomes an agent dropped into ‘free’ France during World War Two. Initially she is just a courier but she stays and helps the embryonic French Resistance and encounters the horrors of the war. Like many of Faulks’ best novels Charlotte Gray combines deep and harrowing emotion with characters which seem to become 3D owing to how well they are crafted. It also poses the Faulksian question of ‘what is faithfulness in a relationship?’ The story moves along apace and never leaves you disappointed as a reader, unfolding with a narrative grace reminiscent of all of his best novels (although in my opinion lacking in some). An excellent book by an excellent author. I can highly recommend ‘Human Traces’, ‘Birdsong’ and ‘Engleby’ if you want to experience him at his best. His upcoming BBC2 programme “On Fiction” will almost certainly be as good!

Thérèse Raquin, at first glance, would appear to be a different kettle of fish. It is the story of the Raquin family and the boredom of Thérèse which leads her into the arms of her husband’s friend Laurent. Upon the unleashing of her passion she and her lover concoct an unspeakable crime and live with the consequences until the end of their lives. Zola writes in the preface to the 2^nd edition that the book has often been reviewed unfavourably, with critics of the time believing it to be immodest and gratuitous, characteristics it often seems to possess. It is indeed racy, aggressive and, for want of a better word, chilling. However he goes on to claim that he is merely documenting the ‘animalistic’ responses of human beings to their senses and pleasures and this gives the book a more philosophical tone, asking questions about morality and human consciousness with a French flair and some skill. Zola is not as skilled at narrative as Faulks and the book drags in places but is still well worth a read for the detail and the ‘noir’ depiction of Paris in the 19^th Century which is evoked.

Where the books merit comparison is in their treatment of passion and mental obsession. Charlotte Gray is led towards what would typically be called positive feelings in her passion for Peter Gregory, a British Airman. One of Faulks’ strongest points is the way he characterises passion and makes it human. Therese on the other hand is driven to negative actions and thoughts during the throes of her passion for Laurent. In both books the reader is transported into an inexplicable and previously misunderstood world. As I have said many times the ability to make a reader see points of view that would never have occurred to them without being written down is one of the greatest strengths of fiction. This, to me, is the power of books and what makes them so enduring and so important to society. A little bit of understanding can go a long way, just as with the issues surrounding the problems of AIDS.