Tuesday, 14 January 2014

The Collector by John Fowles

Frederick is a loner who lives with his aunt and disabled cousin and has an obsession with Miranda, a young art student who he regularly watches. He also spends his time collecting butterflies. 

After winning the pools Ferdinand makes the decision to pay for his aunt and cousin to visit family in Australia and buys himself a house in which he & Miranda will live together.

Now that he has the money to spend on her, Ferdinand hopes Miranda will agree to live with him, but when he kidnaps her as part of his collection of beauty and keeps her captive in the purpose built cellar, he soon realises that reality doesn’t live up to his expectations.

A very hard to read psychological tale which I found a chore to read. It took a long time to get into and I’m not sure I ever did. I really struggled with the lack of structured dialogue & understanding the meaning of the book and now that I’ve finished it, I still don’t know whether I reached it or not.

I don’t feel I got anything out of this book, but I’m sure at the time it was written (1963) it was considered a well written novel.

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