Victorian Version of the Heartbreak Kid [30][93][T]

books:


	• The French Lieutenant's Woman John Fowles Back Bay Books, 1998 - 480 pages average customer review:based on 52 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Delicious documentation of a period

The French Lieutenant's Woman is a delicious grab bag of a novel in which nestles some great magpie type thieving from 19th Century poetry, scientific, and social and literary documents (Marx, Darwin, Hardy, Clough, Tennyson, Arnold and many more) are all draped around the edges of this narrative). It is a real brain feast for anyone interested in high Victorian Britain, and the mores and hypocrisies that lay within (this was a society where the legs of pianos were covered up lest gentlemen become aroused by them, yet had more brothels per head than almost any other society in any part of the world before or since).

Fowles was a great and strange novelist of the curiously fallow middle part of the 20th Century in British letters, the period where Evelyn Waugh was moved to commend the lonely souls who kept the flame of literature burning through the quiet years. A scholar of Victorian England himself, he collected many rare books from the period, and worked diligently at his home in Lyme Regis, away from the bustle of literary salon London to produce big books that challenged novelistic convention. Drawing on French existentialist theory (rather heavy handedly it must be said), he offers a tragic portrayal of two 19th Century lovers: Charles Smithson, a dilletante, rather effete upper class man who struggles with intimations at a freedom that flowered in 1960s England (the time the novel was written) yet for his age were freedoms buried underground. He struggles with the responsibilities of age, and loss of liberty (perennial issues) and encounters the mysterious Sarah Woodruff on a cliff top. Is Sarah a tragic heroine, done a great injustice by the social snobberies of the time, or is she a sly manipulator of Charles's emotions? Fowles plays with these issues, and the narrative in a pyrotechnic, multi-ended conclusion that results in the novel being a curious fusion of 19th Century social realist baggy monster and cunningly playful 20th Century metafiction. Doesn't quite come off, but worth a read.

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A great contemporary, Victorian novel

All the depth and perspicacity of a Victorian novel, told from a late 20th century perspective. Brilliant.

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Victorian Version of the Heartbreak Kid [30][93][T]

This book is better identified for what it is not, than for what it is.

It is not a time period romance novel. It is not a mystery. It is not a "woman's novel." It is not a "man's novel." It is altogether different.

Intellectually, it has plenty to offer. It delivers over 60 poems to the reader. It delivers historical analysis of the concepts and collisions of thought emanating in England during the 1860's. And, amid, that colliding backdrop, Fowles tells us, ". . . every Victorian had two minds." "It is a schizophrenia seen at its clearest, its most notorious, in the poets. . ."

Schizophrenia and Fowles are not strangers. Anyone who has read "Magus" will see some similar twists and turns in this novel - just when the protagonist should "get it", he seems to lead his neck out further and get himself into more trouble, into more sexual allure.

But, unlike "Magus", this protagonist - Charles Smithson - doesn't keep going back to the snake pit to be bitten again and again and again.

Like "Magus, the protagonist, a grown and educated man, seems to be a little boy when it comes to his emotions. Like "Magus", the protagonist leaves his betrothed for the "other woman." And, like "Magus", the other woman is not the answer.

Fowles is a great writer. He can fool you and lure you. In this story line, Fowles will lead you in one direction and jive back pages later to catch you off guard - Fowles' schizophrenia-style of writing. This book also includes a few different endings, to reflect indecision by the author on how to end the novel or to deliver the reader to adopt an ending which he or she may choose to be "best" for this book. I enjoyed this unique application of writing, many others have found it to be a weakness.

At times, this book moves slowly, but at the end it speeds up quickly - like a postscript for the last 50-80 pages. All in all, this is a very good novel, which will entertain and teach its readers about England in that Victorian age.

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Much Ado about Nothing

The starting point for each of Fowles' books - The Collector, The Magus and The French Lieutenant's Woman - is the same. The lead female character emotionally dominates the leading male character, who is a hard-headed dude too obtuse to learn from his repeated mistakes. And, as other reviewers have noted, it's difficult to even like many of the players in this book because they're nothing more than low lifes with selfish and malicious intentions. The development of this simple story springs from (and I realize I'm being trite here) an engaged man, Charles, talking with a single woman, Sarah. And without any adult supervision. Imagine that! But I guess that's the way things were in the 1860s. So, if you can put aside the screwed-up attitudes about relationships during the Victorian era and instead appreciate the mind games that the characters play with each other, you'll find this a pretty good, but dreary, read (I thought The Magus was better). However, it's tough to understand that while Fowles writes so well for more than 400 pages, he can't finish his work by providing a more satisfying (not necessarily happy) ending. A disappointing conclusion, to be sure, but so was the ending in The Collector and The Magus.

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Fun novel!

This is a good book for anyone who likes self-referential fiction. It's written like a Victorian novel, but with a fantastic modern narrator who plays around with the story in places and laments how difficult it is to write novels. I recommend it particularly to anyone who has read or studied Victorian fiction.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Well-known as an international bestseller and award-winning film, The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles is magnificent entertainment. This virtuoso reading by Academy Award winner Jeremy Irons is storytelling at its best. Fowles' intricate portrait of Victorian relationships and love, brought to life by Irons' artistry, will haunt you long after the story ends. 2 cassettes.

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