The French Lieutenant's Woman John Fowles

The French Lieutenant's Woman John Fowles

Overview:

A stunningly brilliant novel, which unfolds like chinese boxes and keeps you both emotionally and intellectually invested in the characters even as it plays with the very fact that it is a fictional exercise.

Equally a love story and a romantic tragedy or perphaps neither; this powerful book evokes the Victorian era as we believe it to be through the lense of literature and then debunks those notions both by the use of historical facts and an unsentimental "modern" questioning of it's values. However, it does so with deep understanding and sympathy and with the realization that we in the "future" suffer from our own existential dilemmas.

Seldom does a writer so perfectly juggle so many different elements so successfully, but this novel overflows with soul wrenching desire, soul searching angst, rollicking plot twists and colorful characters. In fact, the story bears many of the hallmarks of fiction from the time it portrays, particularly the novels of Thomas Hardy, and yet it is very postmodern in it's construction.

The plot is quite compelling on it's own merits but the periodic authorial expostions actually heighten the power of the narrative, illuminating not only the story but the motivations of the artist behind the story. The author even makes a couple of brief appearances as a minor character at pivotal points in the plot.

In a word - exhilarating!

In this contemporary, Victorian-style novel Charles Smithson, a nineteenth-century gentleman with glimmerings of twentieth-century perceptions, falls in love with enigmatic Sarah Woodruff, who has been jilted by a French lover.

Of all John Fowles' novels The French Lieutenant's Woman received the most universal acclaim and today holds a very special place in the canon of post-war English literature. From the god-like stance of the nineteenth-century novelist that he both assumes and gently mocks, to the last detail of dress, idiom and manners, his book is an immaculate recreation of Victorian England.

Not only is it the epic love story of two people of insight and imagination seeking escape from the cant and tyranny of their age, 'The French Lieutenant's Woman' is also a brilliantly sustained allegory of the decline of the twentieth-century passion for freedom.

ENJOYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!

And Blessed Are The Ones Who Care For Their Fellow Men!