Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9645 in Books
• Published on: 2004-11-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

Review
A brilliant success... It is a passionate piece of writing as well as an immaculate example of storytelling Financial Times Compulsively readable Irish Times A splendid, lucid, profoundly satisfying work of art, a book which I want almost immediately to read again New Statesman Brilliant...an artist of great imaginative power Sunday Times

About the Author
John Fowles was born in England in 1926 and educated at Bedford School and Oxford University. John Fowles won international recognition with his first published title. THE COLLECTOR (1963). He was immediately acclaimed as an outstandingly innovative writer of exceptional imaginative power and this reputation was confirmed with the appearance of his subsequent works. John Fowles died in 2005.

Customer Reviews

A Twentieth Century Masterpiece - Fowles at his very best!
It is all too easy to be transported into the world so vividly created for us by John Fowles, as he details the love affair between Charles Smithson and Sarah Woodruff, whilst simultaneously exposing the hypocracies of Victorian England.

Haunted night and day by the face of 'The French Lieutenant's Woman' (Sarah Woodruff) Charles Smithson struggles to forget her and concede to a life with the entirely more conventional Ernestina Freeman. Theirs is the expected and typical Victorian pairing, but as the action progresses, Charles finds his initial curiosity towards the enigmatic Sarah developing into attraction and eventual desire. In his novel, Fowles powerfully depicts Charles's inner conflict between head and heart, painfully illustrating the consequences of allowing the heart to overrule in such a repressed, hypocritical society.

'The French Lieutenant's Woman', with its convoluted yet innovative narrative structure, use of multiple endings, enigmatic characters and reflexivity does not make for simple reading, but perservere and you will be rewarded. Fowles's gripping tale of illicit love, simmering passions, repressed sexuality and (ultimately) painful rejection is a haunting masterpiece. The characters and their situations will live on in your memory long after you have closed the book. A beautifully evocative, engaging and intruiging novel - this is a modern work of art and must not be missed.

Still fresh and intriguing
As fresh and intriguing as on my first reading of this book many years ago. The Victorian age is brilliantly portrayed from the genteel pretensions of Lyme to the rough and tumble of the seedier parts of London. The main characters are strongly portrayed. Would-be paleontologist Charles is from a comfortable upper class background but condescends happily to become engaged to Ernestina who is a pleasant but shallow daughter of a prosperous middle class draper. But into their lives comes Sarah, the enigmatic woman who is rumoured to have been "ruined" by a liaison with French seaman.

Fowles is particularly good on the class war and social mores of the time: The attitude of society to Sarah is shocking as is the off-hand way in which servants are treated. When Ernestina's father suggests that Charles join the drapery business he is truly aghast at the idea even though he has no career in mind.

Sarah remains ambiguous - we are left uncertain as to whether she is manipulative and self-absorbed or badly treated and depressed. Throughout the book she both irritates and evokes our sympathy.

The other central character is the writer himself. He playfully drops in and out of the writing, discussing the motives of the characters and suggesting three different endings. This works superbly. The French Lieutenant's Woman is a twentieth century classic.

Get out of the way John, I'm trying to read
I don't usually comment on endings, but here the author himself doesn't seem to have attached narrative importance to it (and I don't give it away in any case)...

It does all go so well until the ending, previously having toyed intelligently with the reader Fowles declares he cannot make up his mind and uses literary pretensions as a cop-out - turning the motives implausible to air his own political points. It came over more as moral cowardice to me, given his preferred ending is obvious, but spoils the story (and I'm not referring to happy or sad endings).

If you don't mind politics and sociology lectures (bearing in mind the incarnation of both have a limited shelf-life and this was published 1969) hijacking your novel reading then it may feel a refreshing change for you. If you do mind being invited to a sumptuous dinner to be bored by the host afterwards then you may be put out.

Either way I'd urge you to read this book. It contains the best modern depiction of the Victorian age from an author who truly understood it.