About this title: Withdrawn, uneducated and unloved, Frederick collects butterflies and takes photographs. He is obsessed with a beautiful stranger, the art student Miranda. When he wins the pools 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 overcome her own prejudices and contempt if she is to understand her captor, and so gain her freedom.
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Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Laurel Press
Date Published: 1981
ISBN-13:9780440313359ISBN:044031335X
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. has some slight water damage. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Laurel
Date Published: 1981
ISBN-13:9780440313359ISBN:044031335X
Description: Acceptable. Overall below average used book. May have highlighting, underlining, notes, price sticker on cover, or be an ex-library book. read more
Description: Good. A copy that has been read, but remains in clean condition. All pages are intact, and the cover is intact (including dustcover, if applicable). The spine may show signs of wear. Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "from the library of" labels. ******PLEASE NOTE****** Orders placed after Dec. 7 cannot be guaranteed delivery before Christmas unless you select EXPEDITED shipping! Thank you & Happy Holidays! read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
"If while reading this book you find yourself thinking something along the lines of, "I have been so lonely lately, and that girl behind the register who smiles at me lives just down the street, maybe I should walk by her house again, and maybe this weekend I will start renovating that cabin in the woods with some tougher locks"... please put the book down. For those of you without the itch to go down in infamy, I would recommend this as a chillingly compassionate look at the mind of a predator."
"I'm sure this book was somewhat scandalous and shocking when it first appeared in 1963, but it seems rather contrived and too predictable now.
That said I do like the pacing and the interior monologue of the main character, however, I don't see how someone so dumb and inexperienced in life could actually pull off what occurs in the book. His victim is a teenaged girl who seems more intelligent than he, but perhaps this IS the core of madness. Not really stupidity, but having such a warped and distorted view that pretty average people could suss you out if they took the time and effort.
I'M GLAD I KEPT READING! About halfway through the book shifts to the POV of the kidnapped girl and that is actually the best part of the book. A sensitive and intelligent soul her kidnap "diary" is an exploration of different "types" if people and their "values". A very good elucidation of the difference between the "mad" or "damaged" people and those, who really aren't any better off as far as what they were given to work with, but who, however, make a go of life and help give it those little things that make it worth living.
Also the early 1960's thinking on the "New People" (aka the postwar bourgeois class or the noveau riche)is enlightening. I think we're suffering now for what the "New People" helped unleash on this world. A kind of vapid consumerism. Oddly enough though the "Collector" hates the rich and the middle class (he is very class conscious with great resentment over his feelings of inferiority and inadequacy) he is the consummate consumer himself in his pathology of perfection and sterility."
"John Fowles stunned me with _The Magus_; it is the most haunting, twisted, sexy book I've read to date. There is nothing comparable to it in many ways, and _The Collector_ is no exception. Fowles' first book (although he was already at work on his masterpiece) examines obsession, normality, freedom and intellectuality, and as with _The Magus_, he views the modern world through an extreme close-up of the classics- in this case The Tempest. Miranda, a young art student, is kidnapped by Ferdinand Clegg, a collector of rare butterflies, who has recently won a lottery of several thousand pounds. The first half of the book is narrated by Clegg, a sort of advanced bumpkin, whose mindset is quite terrifying because so unexpectedly tame. Most of the second half is comprised of diary entries written by Miranda, dealing with her imprisonment, former life, love interests, and art. Clegg scares me; the fact that a writer composed him scares me a little more.
One incredible development that Fowler maintains and never looses sight of throughout is the simultaneous telling of a story in both the form of realism and that of symbolism. Clegg and Miranda are metaphors, and yet they are straight out of any "true crime" section. This is the book's one and only great internal success, but it is quite innovative.
_The Collector_ has its moments of tension and real terror, its philosophy and social critique, important things to say about gender relations, a prophetic account of the nature of modern mental illness, and, at times, forcefully poetic writing. For the most part it is also boring beyond words, and never anything amounting to more than a first novel should.
A minor book, but still, a "thriller" that sometimes thinks very deeply about itself."
"The superficial plot of "The Collector" is harrowing, especially when narrated from the point of view of Miranda, a young art student held captive in a butterfly collector's basement. However, this novel is far from the "best-seller" variety psychological-thriller.
Beneath the interesting psychological aspects; ie. the motivations and justifications of a sociopath and the the range of emotions a victim goes through in relation to the captor, Fowles is really investigating the tensions created by class differences and subsequently their effect on one's ability to process and evaluate certain concepts, such as art and social/poltical causes. Fred, the butterfly collector and kidnapper, is an uneducated, working class Brit who fails to comprehend or find beauty in aesthetics, music, and literature. After a windfall lottery win, he believes that he can buy culture, just as he believes that he can capture love. His values and conception of the world are rooted in those of the class he was raised in, and the acquisition of money cannot change this. Miranda is his antithesis, possessing a relentless urge to create, intellectual curiosity, and empathy. Like Fowles, she strives to embody the subject in her art, rather than merely portray it. Miranda attempts to culturally educate her captor, to no avail, in the hopes of forming a common bond and accessing some bit of dormant humanity.
Beyond examining the influence of class and culture, perception itself is explored. The novel's narrative structure is divided into four parts, with the 1st, 3rd, and 4th narrated by Fred, and the 2nd by Miranda. Of course, both narrators are completely unreliable, as one is a sociopath and the other is writing in a journal under the duress of captivity. The alternate perspectives of the same plot events and digressions into inner monologues further develop both characters and heighten their tense relationship.
"The Collector", Fowles' first novel, hints at many of the themes and structures that he further develops in the exquisite "The French Lieutenant's Woman", albeit without the post-structuralist elements that make that novel so fascinating. Highly recommended as a first foray into Fowles, it will definitely not be your last."
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