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3.85 AVERAGE
3.85 AVERAGE
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
*read in 2025*
Withdrawn, uneducated and unloved, Frederick collects butterflies and takes photographs. He is obsessed with a beautiful stranger, art student Miranda. Coming into unexpected money, he buys a remote Sussex house and calmly abducts Miranda, believing she will grow to love him in time. Alone and desperate, Miranda must struggle to understand her captor if she is to gain her freedom…
Withdrawn, uneducated and unloved, Frederick collects butterflies and takes photographs. He is obsessed with a beautiful stranger, art student Miranda. Coming into unexpected money, he buys a remote Sussex house and calmly abducts Miranda, believing she will grow to love him in time. Alone and desperate, Miranda must struggle to understand her captor if she is to gain her freedom…
Pretty irritating stuff, and I can't tell if I'm irritated because 1) it's a very Existentialist novel; i.e., one that wants to give its characters Existential choices or 2) it won't stop banging on about a few of its well worn themes a) the bloody fucking middle classes b) the meaninglessness of modern life, c) how great artist are or d) how the petit bougie suck shit.
I'll accord it this: For a book published in 1963, it's pretty dark stuff. Through its main character, Clegg, it projects a dark and sinister atmosphere. The way Clegg, the sort of incel, Travis Bickle-esque, male character is a terrifying blank and often speaks in unsettling understatement and indiect language. But he's also extremely boring and appears to exist only to kidnap and essentially torture the other main character, Miranda, a 20 year old art student. Sure, there are attempts to develop Clegg's character, but once you realize that Fowles is more interested in Miranda's POV, one he is more in alignment as I'll mention in a bit, than Clegg becomes something merely like a blunt object. He's like if Patrick Bateman sucked and was lame lmao I'm just kidding. He's like if Travis Bickle just collected butterflies and kidnapped women. He only wants to collect and observe and possess Miranda. He doesn't want to actually love her. His existential act is kidnapping her because he asserts his values over conventional morality but he soon finds that there's more more to living existentially and then the novel kind of gives up on him after that. He can just keep kidnapping women until it works out. Sisyphus descends to the boulder once more!
On the other hand there is Miranda who's interiority is fleshed out in the form of the journal she keeps in her captivity. Here Fowles is able to really dig into this existentialist view as well as I think assert that most artists are existential in some way. They are asserting their values and their labor in order to create something out of the existing order of things. Existentialism is in a sense a will to power over the apparent world of meaninglessness. Through this will to power the Existential Man can assert his value system over the apparent absurdity and meaningless of the conventional order (here, presented as the development of a petite bourgeoisie class developing in England). Miranda idolizes an older artist, G.P. (whose name must stand for General Principle, it's not like he's a real character, he's more like the Wildean Artist or something) and as she reflects on her life in captivity she grows to realize that she loves G.P. and wants to assert her art over the meaninglessness of the world. However, in her capitvity, the only existential act she is allotted by the author is to sleep with Clegg. She must enact this value above conventional morality, above her own sense of self even, in order to possibly escape. Clegg by the way has repeatedly and endlessly disavowed his sexual desire. Because he is middle class, folks! The middle class suck, Fowles wants us to know, and they're never up front about what they want. Miranda (whose name by the way means in Latin "to be admired" or "to be looked at" because Fowles won't use a hammer when a sledgehammer will do). She finds it in her heart to love this monster, this Caliban (as she names him), and, surprise, it doesn't work. He realizes she's common and just like all the other women and she catches pneumonia and dies.
What a lame end for a character the novel was in such sympathy with! It's clear to me that Fowles believes artists function as existential heroes in this novel. And while he gives both Clegg and Miranda existential choices (Clegg at one point realizes the only sensible act is for him to kill himself after what happened with Miranda but when he reads Miranda's diary he realizes that she's a real person who didn't love him actually and then he can reduce her to an image, a butterfly, and pin her to the wall and find the next one), only Miranda is able to actually go through with it. And again, I'm wondering what the point of this all was. Sure, the middle class, and sure existentialism is one way to deal with life's inherent absurdity, but when it all comes down to merely projecting the depraved whims of your ego, which is really the dark passenger driving your will to power and sense of personal value, there's really not a lot of pro sociality to the whole thing. That, and, it seems like Fowles designed this little torture chamber novel to toy with an interesting, well rounded character for the sake of a few themes.
If you're interesting in a much more complex and pyrotechnically written version of this story involving the sins and boredom of the British middle class post WW2, get thee to John Hawke's The Lime Twig which is the far superior novel
I'll accord it this: For a book published in 1963, it's pretty dark stuff. Through its main character, Clegg, it projects a dark and sinister atmosphere. The way Clegg, the sort of incel, Travis Bickle-esque, male character is a terrifying blank and often speaks in unsettling understatement and indiect language. But he's also extremely boring and appears to exist only to kidnap and essentially torture the other main character, Miranda, a 20 year old art student. Sure, there are attempts to develop Clegg's character, but once you realize that Fowles is more interested in Miranda's POV, one he is more in alignment as I'll mention in a bit, than Clegg becomes something merely like a blunt object. He's like if Patrick Bateman sucked and was lame lmao I'm just kidding. He's like if Travis Bickle just collected butterflies and kidnapped women. He only wants to collect and observe and possess Miranda. He doesn't want to actually love her. His existential act is kidnapping her because he asserts his values over conventional morality but he soon finds that there's more more to living existentially and then the novel kind of gives up on him after that. He can just keep kidnapping women until it works out. Sisyphus descends to the boulder once more!
On the other hand there is Miranda who's interiority is fleshed out in the form of the journal she keeps in her captivity. Here Fowles is able to really dig into this existentialist view as well as I think assert that most artists are existential in some way. They are asserting their values and their labor in order to create something out of the existing order of things. Existentialism is in a sense a will to power over the apparent world of meaninglessness. Through this will to power the Existential Man can assert his value system over the apparent absurdity and meaningless of the conventional order (here, presented as the development of a petite bourgeoisie class developing in England). Miranda idolizes an older artist, G.P. (whose name must stand for General Principle, it's not like he's a real character, he's more like the Wildean Artist or something) and as she reflects on her life in captivity she grows to realize that she loves G.P. and wants to assert her art over the meaninglessness of the world. However, in her capitvity, the only existential act she is allotted by the author is to sleep with Clegg. She must enact this value above conventional morality, above her own sense of self even, in order to possibly escape. Clegg by the way has repeatedly and endlessly disavowed his sexual desire. Because he is middle class, folks! The middle class suck, Fowles wants us to know, and they're never up front about what they want. Miranda (whose name by the way means in Latin "to be admired" or "to be looked at" because Fowles won't use a hammer when a sledgehammer will do). She finds it in her heart to love this monster, this Caliban (as she names him), and, surprise, it doesn't work. He realizes she's common and just like all the other women and she catches pneumonia and dies.
What a lame end for a character the novel was in such sympathy with! It's clear to me that Fowles believes artists function as existential heroes in this novel. And while he gives both Clegg and Miranda existential choices (Clegg at one point realizes the only sensible act is for him to kill himself after what happened with Miranda but when he reads Miranda's diary he realizes that she's a real person who didn't love him actually and then he can reduce her to an image, a butterfly, and pin her to the wall and find the next one), only Miranda is able to actually go through with it. And again, I'm wondering what the point of this all was. Sure, the middle class, and sure existentialism is one way to deal with life's inherent absurdity, but when it all comes down to merely projecting the depraved whims of your ego, which is really the dark passenger driving your will to power and sense of personal value, there's really not a lot of pro sociality to the whole thing. That, and, it seems like Fowles designed this little torture chamber novel to toy with an interesting, well rounded character for the sake of a few themes.
If you're interesting in a much more complex and pyrotechnically written version of this story involving the sins and boredom of the British middle class post WW2, get thee to John Hawke's The Lime Twig which is the far superior novel
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
The most repulsive discussing book i have read. WHY WHY it has solid points and ideas
I don't know why I forgot to write a review, but I read the book about five months ago and I absolutely loved the way Fowles has written the book. Easily 5 out of 5.
best psychological book you could ever read, cleggs character is so scary
dark
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes