Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles ISBN: 0-316-29116-1 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.36 (36 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: My every five years novel.
Comment: I first read this wonderful book in the late 60's, shortly after it published. As a high school student, I was simply blown away by the story, the virtuosity of the endings, by its ambiguity, but most of all by the richness of its language.
The scene when Charles and Sarah confront each other in the shed in the undercliff has more tension and suspense than a thousand horror movies, because it was so real.
In the intervening 30 years, I've re-read this novel every five years or so. Like other great works, each re-reading brings something new (because I continue to change).
The great tragedy, at least in my view, is that what has followed from John Fowles has never risen to the heights of this novel. Daniel Martin was a huge disappointment to me (so self-indulgent and empty). The Maggot has some moments, but was ultimately disappointing. Only The Magus, and, to a lesser degree, The Collector, rival The French Lieutentant's Woman.
That said, Fowles has always been his own man and has stuck to his view of the world. I've read some of his philosophy of life in the Aristos and found most of it to be inconsistent with my own world view.
But in this great book, Fowles and I connected. I hope when I'm ninety, I can sit down and read it again (and find something fresh and new).
Rating: 4
Summary: The Victorian Era read by the late '60s
Comment: When I started reading The French Lt's Woman, i was expecting some very sad, tragic and hard to follow, but what I got is quite the opposite: the book gives you good laughs sometimes and it is very catching. I think that the fact of being written more than a hundrer years later than the time when the story takes place allows the writer to have a critical and ironic inight in his characters and events as well.
Fowles is a master when it comes to go over the XIX century using the XX century approach. From time to time he reminds us that when the book was being written most of the moral of its characters and situations had already changed. On the other hand, we can see that the world hasn't changed at all in many other subjects dealt in the book.
I guess that when the book was first published in the late '60s it caught on, and it is easy to understand, The French... goes with the sixties ideas.
To sum up, it is a book interesting for anyone who enjoys a good writting and wants to see how different ( or similar) we are from the Victorian Era.
Rating: 5
Summary: A true masterpiece
Comment: In the first hundred pages of this book I had already begun to realize that this was one of the best books I have ever read. That feeling never let up; indeed, it grew even stronger as I approached the end, when I began to feel a frantic eagerness to discover what would become of these characters that I had grown to care so much for.
Sarah Woodruff (aka the French Lieutenant's Woman) is one of my favorite characters in literature. She is a complex, nuanced character, intriguingly covered by a delicate veil of mystery throughout the first half of the book. Her pain, her selfless sacrifice, and her courage are deeply and powerfully drawn. She is a true example of a woman ahead of her time, a woman who challenges the norms of her society by simply ignoring them. Her confidence and her quiet scorn for the Puritanism of the times in which she lives raise her to a level above the so-called moral leaders who condemn her. In a strange way, she is a true hero.
This book, written in the late 1960s but set one hundred years earlier, is a beautiful example of period literature. Fowles, through his remarkably genuine narrative voice, recreates the world of Victorian England in such a way that if it weren't for the occasional references to modern life you might think the book was a century older than it is. It is filled with all the pomp and formality you would expect, but also with a wit, dry humor, and quiet mocking of the period that lend it an added flavor.
But Fowles is not simply trying to create a period piece or social commentary. I believe that first and foremost he was creating a love story. I would put Charles and Sarah in the same category with Romeo and Juliet as far as love stories go. The relationship is developed slowly, so slow that it is exquisitely painful almost. And though the time they spend together is brief, it is filled with an unmistakable air of eventual tragedy.
The only question left in my mind is whether to categorize this book as a classic of modern fiction or of 19th century fiction. It could easily stand in either section of my bookshelf.
 |
Title: The Magus by John Fowles ISBN: 0440351626 Publisher: Dell Publishing Company Pub. Date: 01 May, 1985 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
 |
Title: The Collector by John Fowles ISBN: 0316290238 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: 04 August, 1997 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
 |
Title: Cliffsnotes French Lieutenant's Woman by James F., Jr. Bellman, Kathryn Bellman ISBN: 0822004992 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons (T) Pub. Date: 01 July, 1984 List Price(USD): $4.95 |
 |
Title:The French Lieutenant's Woman ASIN: B00005LOKU Publisher: Mgm/Ua Studios Pub. Date: 04 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.98 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $17.98 |
 |
Title: Mantissa by John Fowles ISBN: 0316290270 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: 04 August, 1997 List Price(USD): $15.99 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
