When I first heard the song which shares the title of this book by the 80's pop band, The Cure, I was enthralled. Astonishment ensued when I found out that the band had written the song about a story.
I had to order the book as it is no longer in print and paid a pretty penny for something I figured would be nothing more than a keepsake for my love of The Cure. From the first page it became impossible to put the book down.
I read it three times since I bought it and every time I try to figure out why and what has caused this riff in time for Charlotte. READ IT!!! I can't wait to find out what people think.

Read it for Robert smith. Gonna make my future weird 12 year old daughter read this one day

Just as good as I remembered when I read it as a child.

I came to this book somewhat late, having learnt of it only through my adoration of The Cure (Robert Smith took inspiration from the book for three of his songs - 'Charlotte Sometimes', 'Splintered in her Head' and 'The Empty World'). I now share at least one thing with Robert Smith (in addition to my teen penchant for eyeliner); we have both been haunted by this book for years.

Two young girls make an improbable connection across time and space without ever actually meeting; this was hard-hitting stuff for a children's book. Ostensibly a time-travel/adventure story ('with quite large writing', as one of my friends joked when he saw me reading it), Charlotte Sometimes is really about so much more - war, alienation, identity... what makes you you.

Told with the simplicity yet piercing perception that only a child's perspective can bring, this is incredibly poignant and much more complex than it might at first seem.

I've selected this as one of 10 books that have influenced my life in some way. Please check out my blog, Inky Squiggles, to see the others!

It is amazing how many people have read, Charlotte Sometimes, because of The Cure, myself included. The opening line of this book, is also the opening line of The Cure song of the same name, Charlotte Sometimes:

"All the faces, all the voices blur. Change to one face, change to one voice....." Anyone who knows the song will find it impossible to read that line without singing it in their head, or even out loud!

I first read this book back the the 1980's when The Cure released the song "Charlotte Sometimes," and then I read it again more recently. It is a magical story of time travel between two girls, I really enjoyed reading this beautiful story. The story of Charlotte and Claire's time travel is so exciting. It gets a bit sad near the end, parts are a bit dark, but in a good way. The story will really bring out a child's emotions and make them think, it is books like this that will give children a love of reading.

Although this is a children's book, I truly believe it can be enjoyed by all ages. Its a long time since I was a child! ;)

I highly recommend this book, not just because I am a massive fan of The Cure. This is an enchanting story, I can guarantee that once you read this book you will never ever forgot it...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KeII3...

Llegué a este libro por la canción de The Cure que es mi grupo favorito.

Está muy bellamente escrito, es un libro para niños que trata de una niña inglesa de los cincuentas que viaja hasta 1918 casi al fin de la 1a guerra mundial y la epidemia de influenza y cambia lugares con otra niña de esa época.

Algunas personas le encuentran significados profundos sobre el «ser» y sobre quiénes somos en realidad. La misma autora ha dicho que no tenía en mente escribir cosas con bastante significado (y que si lo hubiera intentado hacer a propósito no le hubiera resultado).

En verdad fue una lectura que me encantó, está muy bien escrito y bello como la infancia.

I have been utterly beguiled and charmed. No. Not by any human being but by this wonderful wonderful book. ‘Charlotte Sometimes’ is everything that I have come to love about Children’s Literature - funny, whimsical, imaginative, and deeply philosophical. Oh yes! There’s so much in 'Charlotte Sometimes' about the nature of self and identity - I almost had tears at the end.

At heart, this book is about time travel. Charlotte finds herself back in time during the First World War with Clare. Simplistic as I make that sound, the book is so nuanced as Charlotte struggles with the different feelings and emotions she goes through while meeting the people from ‘there.’ Heartwarming, adorable, and unforgettable. Just read this book!

Charlotte Sometimes is a wistful, fascinating blend of boarding school story and time travel fantasy. When Charlotte wakes up from her first night at boarding school, she finds that she has been magically transported back into the past, where everyone thinks she's a girl called Clare, attending the same school forty years earlier. When she wakes up the next morning, she's back in her own time, but she soon realizes that she slips back and forth every night, spending every other day as Clare.

Farmer does a masterful job rendering Charlotte's sense of displacement and confusion, which increase with every switch, until she begins to doubt her own identity. The historical details are nicely done too, as Charlotte sees the differences between her own time and the time during World War I to which she slips back. This is a beautifully atmospheric, character-rich book, which I would think would work well for older children and for adults as well - it certainly did for me.

Time slip stories were a popular theme for children’s writers of the Fifties and Sixties, although few reach the stunning heights of the greatest of them all, Philippa Pearce’s Tom’s Midnight Garden. Charlotte Sometimes is, at first glance, a fairly standard girls boarding school story with a time travel twist (in this case, just forty years back to the end of the First World War) but it soon becomes something more rich and strange than that premise suggests. Charlotte finds herself swapping her life (first just alternate days, then a longer spell) with Clare, a boarder at the same school in 1918, which leads to a deeper exploration of issues of identity, self-understanding and the nature of time than you might expect to find in a book for children, which is presumably why the book has remained in print since first published in 1969.

Time travel and boarding school - how can you beat it?

My friend Ellen tells me that the Cure has a song called Charlotte Sometimes based on this book. How very odd!

3.75

This book is about more than it seems to be. It's about time travel, I suppose, though really that's only incidental. It's about self-knowledge for Charlotte, and how she gets a little braver and more distinct in how she differs from Clare. It's also about all the other characters and how they change throughout the book, though we only ever see them through Charlotte's eyes. And it's about people never really in the book at all, like Arthur, and Emma, and Clare for that matter. It has a feeling of ghosts throughout--though most of the ghosts are real. And a feeling of mystery. And loneliness. And loss. And comfort through time. And lack of comfort. And growing up.

Anyway, it's wicked good.