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3.75 AVERAGE
3.75 AVERAGE
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Too brooding for me.
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Fowles is an astonishing story-teller, I've been in a bit (a lot) of a reading slump lately and starting this book got me immediately on the go. If I were to describe this novel in a couple of words it would be "a love story of philosophy and gender issues with political storytelling nuances". In addition, the careful analysis of the dichotomy between adhering to society's rules vs pursuing what's true to you: in Sarah's case it manifests in her willingness to dominate relationships whether it be through her victimhood and in Charles' case it manifests through his hedonistic existentialism, mostly apparent in the Church scene.
Hem farklı roman okuması ve hem de roman yazımı tekniği ile üzerinde biraz düşündüren ve entelektüel birikime katkı da bulunan bir eser olduğunu düşünüyorum.
I tried resisting this. It has its occasional heavy-handedness and there are some stretches (the Rossettis, for example, please!), but the prose is so wonderful, the story(ies) is rich like cake and the intrusive author with his Victorian reflections so companionable that all I could do when I finished was lift the book in both hands and say WOW.
There are such landscapes here:
“From the air it is not very striking; one notes merely that whereas elsehwere on the coast the fields run to the cliff edge, here they stop a mile or so short of it. The cultivated chequer of geen and red-brown breaks, with a kind of joyous indiscipline, into a dark cascade of trees and undergrowth.” (p. 66)
“The ground about him was studded gold and pale yellow with celandines and primroses and banked by the bridal white of densely blossoming sloe...” (. 67)
Such reflections on the age, for example, when Charles is made melancholy by the beauty of nature:
“… that the desire to hold and the desire to enjoy are mutally destructive. His statement to himself should have been, “I possess this now, therefore I am happy,” instead of what it so Victorianly was: “I cannot possess this forever, and therefore I am sad.”
I knew the book was one in which the author intrudes to shatter the reader’s illusions about the story being in any way “real,” and I was trepidatious that might spoil things, but it did not. I loved, for example, when the author jumped into the train with Charles and watched him while he slept. Or when Charles receives a secret note from Sarah, he writes:
“But the folly of the procedure, the risk!
The French! Varguennes!
... a vision of her running sodden through the lightning and rain momentarily distracted him from own acute and self-directed anxiety. But it was too much! After such a day!
I am overdoing it on the exclamation marks...”
I had to laugh.
And even while the author is reminding you the characters aren’t real, he lets you know they sometimes seem to have their own will. And what good characters they are. Charles and Sam and Mary and Mrs. Poulteney and Ernestina and the doctor, and Sarah, who turns out not to be any French lieutenant’s woman, or anyone’s woman at all.
(p.s. I disliked the movie, and am so glad that didn't keep me from reading the book.)
There are such landscapes here:
“From the air it is not very striking; one notes merely that whereas elsehwere on the coast the fields run to the cliff edge, here they stop a mile or so short of it. The cultivated chequer of geen and red-brown breaks, with a kind of joyous indiscipline, into a dark cascade of trees and undergrowth.” (p. 66)
“The ground about him was studded gold and pale yellow with celandines and primroses and banked by the bridal white of densely blossoming sloe...” (. 67)
Such reflections on the age, for example, when Charles is made melancholy by the beauty of nature:
“… that the desire to hold and the desire to enjoy are mutally destructive. His statement to himself should have been, “I possess this now, therefore I am happy,” instead of what it so Victorianly was: “I cannot possess this forever, and therefore I am sad.”
I knew the book was one in which the author intrudes to shatter the reader’s illusions about the story being in any way “real,” and I was trepidatious that might spoil things, but it did not. I loved, for example, when the author jumped into the train with Charles and watched him while he slept. Or when Charles receives a secret note from Sarah, he writes:
“But the folly of the procedure, the risk!
The French! Varguennes!
... a vision of her running sodden through the lightning and rain momentarily distracted him from own acute and self-directed anxiety. But it was too much! After such a day!
I am overdoing it on the exclamation marks...”
I had to laugh.
And even while the author is reminding you the characters aren’t real, he lets you know they sometimes seem to have their own will. And what good characters they are. Charles and Sam and Mary and Mrs. Poulteney and Ernestina and the doctor, and Sarah, who turns out not to be any French lieutenant’s woman, or anyone’s woman at all.
(p.s. I disliked the movie, and am so glad that didn't keep me from reading the book.)
One of my favorite books, and I had sitting on a shelf from college for like 9 years until I got around to reading it. I love books set in the Victorian era, and loved the metafictional (har har) twist to this one.
challenging
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
All you need to know is that it took me 395 days to finish this book. That’s it, that’s the review.
(jk, it’ll be up by tomorrow)
(jk, it’ll be up by tomorrow)
I enjoyed the Victorian twist on an otherwise familiar storyline, but didn't care for the author/narrator butting in throughout the story. Overall, I still enjoyed the read, but would have preferred that the author keep his writing insights to himself and stick to the story.
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix