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La Créature

3.5 of 5 stars 3.50 · rating details · 1,205 ratings · 55 reviews

In this magnificent and compelling novel, bestselling author John Fowles has created a dazzlingly erotic tale of obsession and desire, madness and murder. Four men and one woman, all traveling under assumed names, are crossing the Devonshire countryside on their way toward a mysterious rendezvous in the spring of 1736. But nothing is as it seems. Before their violent and e...more

Paperback, 507 pages

Published October 1st 1987 by Albin Michel (first published 1985)

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Aug 07, 2012 mark monday rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: into-the-past

i tried reading this when i was 15, i think around the time it first came out. perhaps i was too ambitious, because the novel was too much for me, and i gave up. i suppose i just didn't get it. but i can be competitive - even with books, even with myself. so i promised young mark monday that the battle wasn't over, that i'd return to re-engage 25 years later, when i had become an old, wise man...and i would eventually conquer this one.

well, mark, it is now 25 years later.

__________

...and so i p...more

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Aug 17, 2012 Terry rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, sci-fi

_A Maggot_ is an interesting novel. It can be approached as an historical mystery, a meta-fictional experiment of mixed narrative form and genre, and a meditation on the injustices inherent in the 18th century social, political and religious mindset. The story proper details a mysterious journey undertaken by five individuals across the English landscape whose destination and purpose is unknown. In addition to this each of the individuals is not what they appear, and may not even be what they th...more _A Maggot_ is an interesting novel. It can be approached as an historical mystery, a meta-fictional experiment of mixed narrative form and genre, and a meditation on the injustices inherent in the 18th century social, political and religious mindset. The story proper details a mysterious journey undertaken by five individuals across the English landscape whose destination and purpose is unknown. In addition to this each of the individuals is not what they appear, and may not even be what they themselves think they are. This ‘simple’ mystery plot form is expressed with a variety of narrative techniques: a somewhat distant 3rd person with occasional authorial asides taking place “now” interspersing longer passages of first person question-and-answer that are occurring in the “then” of 18th century England. As the story progresses the reader begins to see that even the genre boundaries of mystery and historical fiction are being crossed and significant possible elements of science fiction begin to creep into the tale.

Accepting this novel at face value as a historical mystery would be a mistake, especially since it seems to be a mystery whose whole purpose is not to be unravelled. Rather the mystery ‘plot’ is the vehicle which allows Fowles to show how each character’s own conception of this mystery of which they are a part, and its possible solutions, is determined by their own social standing and personal background, by the hidebound preconceptions they each bring to their experience of the world. These disparate characters allow Fowles to put on display a particular aspect of human society that he perceives as having been distinctly strong in 18th century society due to its make-up, but that still exists today: that we are determined by our perceptions and expectations. The question and answer segments are particularly useful in this regard for making explicit how differently each character interprets the same events; how they look to the expected, the known, or the conventional, in order to explain something that is beyond their experience. Even the visionary falls back onto traditional (to her) paradigms in order to be able to interpret her life-changing experience.

The juxtaposition of perceptions and assumptions of the modern era (as witnessed in the 3rd person intrusions) with those of the 18th century when the novel takes place are well done, and seem central to the novel. These are characters who very much feel like authentic inhabitants of their era. Their modes of speaking and even of thought are truly alien to the modern reader in many ways. As a result Fowles is able to use these differences to indulge in his thematic hobby-horses of free will vs. pre-destination, the fear of change vs. the need to progress, and unthinking acceptance vs. the belief that change can and must be effected. These are ideas that many of us take for granted, but Fowles shows how new and strange many of these concepts were when the novel takes place and they were still in their larval stages. Another major cultural difference between the reader and those whom the book purports to represent is seen in Fowles’ notion that their sense of individuality is not even close to our own (would not even be considered as “individuality” at all by our standards). Fowles goes so far as to draw comparisons between the constraints of people from this era and those of a character in a book, the “plot” of their lives pre-determined according to their role and function in society (certainly if born below a certain social level), and harps on the fact that this was utterly natural to them, something which the vast majority of the people of the day would not even consider an issue worth considering. It is an intriguing idea and allows the more obvious meta aspects of the narrative to gain a further level of depth. Ironically Fowles notes both explicitly and implicitly that that the “birth” of the individual, one of the key elements that broke up the injustices inherent in the 18th century social, political and religious mindset, was as much a blessing as a curse.

All that being said I still found the book to be one I felt more obliged to finish than one that carried me along with the rush of its passage. At times the question and answer sections of the novel seemed to carry on too long and the 3rd person narrative parts could perhaps have been more liberally interspersed into the text than they were. I can accept that not all mysteries have to have a solution, but the utter lack of any real understanding of what happened in that cave in western England, and the impenetrable nature of the young lord’s real purpose and end, is certainly frustrating. In the end I guess I would consider this a highly successful meditation on the birth of modernity and the ways in which we have both learned from, and ignored to our peril, the lessons of the past, but only a moderately successful novel. I think David Mitchell would have written something on the same subject and with the same elements with just as much depth, but that was much more interesting.
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May 09, 2013 Bettie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: paper-read, spring-2013, tbr-busting-2013, one-penny-wonder

Opening: A maggot is the larval stage of a winged creature; as is the written text, at least in the writer's hope.

In here is a character called Dorcas and for those of us who have watched and/or read Lark Rise to Candleford the phrase "what would Dorcas Lane do?" Is enough to send one to hide behind the curtains of a kidney shaped dressing table to start pulling out tresses by the mit full.

The 3 star is a hattip to the authorial skill, however the caveat is that I did not care for this tale - it...more

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Apr 08, 2011 William rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 20-ce, uk, fiction

Dazzling. Stunning. The best I've read of him.

On second reading, the novel holds up remarkably well. It seems at first a study in the perpetuation of literary suspense. The book jumps between third-person narration; a kind of mock-legal deposition which permits multiple narrative voices; essayistic asides, and epistolary elements. The third-person voice often refers to the gap between events at the time of the story--the 1730s--and our present day. For example: "Closer,...groups of children nois...more Dazzling. Stunning. The best I've read of him.

On second reading, the novel holds up remarkably well. It seems at first a study in the perpetuation of literary suspense. The book jumps between third-person narration; a kind of mock-legal deposition which permits multiple narrative voices; essayistic asides, and epistolary elements. The third-person voice often refers to the gap between events at the time of the story--the 1730s--and our present day. For example: "Closer,...groups of children noisily played lamp-loo and tutball, those primitive forms of tag and baseball. Modern lovers of the second game would have been shocked to see that here it was preponderantly played by girls (and perhaps to know that its traditional prize, for the most skilled, was not the million-dollar contract, but a mere tansy pudding.)" The novel begins with a tableau of five individuals, four of them male, of varying ages, who make a journey to the west of England on horseback. There is an uncle, his nephew, and three servants, one female. We come across them as they travel a muddy road to a bleak village. It is there at the musty inn, and later in a nearby cave, that much of the action occurs; action that will later be dissected by way of a series of legal depositions run by the dwarfish (and hateful) London lawyer, Henry Ayscough. We learn a few things during the interrogations: that nephew and uncle are in fact unrelated; that the nephew is the true leader of the excursion; that the uncle is an actor by profession; that the maid is a prostitute; that one of the servants is deaf and dumb; and so forth. Only the nephew who is not a nephew knows the true purpose of the trip, which for most of the book remains a mystery. We also know that the nephew believes he has hit on a mathematical device or formula that once fully developed will allow him to foretell the future. That is to say, he's crazy as a loon. Still, what can it mean? Why the trip? Why the subsequent investigation? And where has everyone gone? Slowly, one by one, at the behest of the nephew's aristocratic father, the lawyer tracks down all of the participants save one. And in a question and answer format that allows no room for description, or authorial commentary, he painstakingly gets a story. But is it the story? That's a very good question, and in large part the novel's point, questioning narrative constructs as it does. It is the prostitute's deposition that for this reader was the most engrossing. For since her excursion to the cave she has given up whoring and has returned to the Quaker community of her parents in Manchester, fully forgiven. What she undergoes she interprets, perhaps the only way she knows how, as an ecstatic Christian experience. She has been vouchsafed a vision of heaven and hell. Christianity is the only tool she has for interpreting such a fantastic experience. And there's no doubt that she thinks her story genuine. Lawyer Ayscough can not shake her from it. Nor can he believe it. And in the end is shaken himself. Like her, he is limited, by virtue of his place in time, to viewing it as nothing more than religious hysteria. The 21st century reader, however, sees what has happened in the cave as something quite different. I'll stop there. Like Fowles' French Lieutenant's Woman, the narrative toys with metafictional devices, but never to the point where they distract. Oh, yes, you'll have to read this one. (less)

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Aug 06, 2012 Izzy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I wrote this review a few years ago. I just moved to a new apartment, and while I rearranged my books in the perfect order, I came across my copy of A Maggot and remembered this, so I shall copy and paste:

JOHN FOWLES: A MAGGOT

My previous experience reading the work of John Fowles is sporadic but rather steady: while taking a “Literature of the Occult” class in college, The Magus was required reading and sometime last winter I made it through The Collector (recommended to me by Maxim magazine, of...more

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Feb 17, 2013 Smcleish rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: owned

Originally published on my blog here in July 2004.

In The French Lieutenant's Woman, Fowles wrote a knowing twentieth century version of a nineteenth century novel. A Maggot is more conventionally a historical novel, set in 1736 but despite fitting better into the genre, it shares much of the ironic self awareness of Fowles' best known work.

The novel starts with something very small - a group of travellers riding across Exmoor, who stop overnight at a small village before heading on again. But a...more Originally published on my blog here in July 2004.

In The French Lieutenant's Woman, Fowles wrote a knowing twentieth century version of a nineteenth century novel. A Maggot is more conventionally a historical novel, set in 1736 but despite fitting better into the genre, it shares much of the ironic self awareness of Fowles' best known work.

The novel starts with something very small - a group of travellers riding across Exmoor, who stop overnight at a small village before heading on again. But a few days later, one of the party, a mute servant, is found dead, having apparently hanged himself. The rest of the novel deals with an investigation, not so much an attempt to find out what actually happened, but to do so as a stage towards finding the rest of the party, who have completely disappeared and who included at least one important person. Thus, the form of most of the novel is records of the interrogations of witnesses, separated (to indicated the passing of time) by excepts from the Gentleman's Magazine, a journal of the time, apparently reproduced in facsimile. While outwardly more like The French Lieutenant's Woman, The Maggot actually has more in common with The Magus. The witness interviews reveal that the ostensible purpose of the trip to Exeter hides another more sinister motive; that the people involved are not who they seem to be; that what is really going on involves some kind of occult ritual.

Anthony Burgess described this novel as "subversive", and there are several ways in which this might be considered to be true. There are both overt and covert attacks on the ideas behind the class structure of Georgian society, some of which are fairly clearly meant to make the reader think about those in positions of authority today. The idea that someone from a higher class would necessarily be a better person is not one readily believed today, but some relic of it is surely part of our hunger for scandal about the morals of politicians and celebrities - do we now believe that people in the public eye should be better than we are? There are also attacks on religious hypocrisy, particularly when the political nature of the Anglican church of the time is compared with the unsettling intensity of the Dissenters. This doesn't have quite the same resonance with the modern world, however, and attacking hypocrisy is not exactly subversive. Dissent is a sufficiently important theme that it as a focus may be said to be another aspect of subversion in the novel.

The way that A Maggot is structured is another element which is more truly subversive. Historical novels are generally quite descriptive, because part of the aim of the genre is usually to convey their background to today's readers. Here, there is very little description, apart from that in the opening pages which are entirely of this form but which could be set in any time period in which groups of travellers rode horses across Exmoor when it was a remote dangerous wilderness and not somewhere frequented by tourists as it is today - in other words, any time before the arrival of the railways. After this beginning, atmospheric as good historical novels are supposed to be, yet not positioning the narrative in time or even (initially) in place, the historical context is mainly provided by the Gentleman's Magazine excerpts, which most readers probably find difficult to read as they're in extremely small type and a hard to decipher font, apart from their lack of relation to the story.

There is also literary subversion of the same type as in The Magus. In both novels, layers of deception are gradually exposed; but here the use of interrogation reports makes the revelations less effective, even though the reader will still spend most of the novel wondering what is really going on behind all the lies.

The way that the title refers to several aspects of A Maggot is not so much subversive as clever (and Fowles obviously thought it important enough to spell out why he chose it in the introduction). In one sense, it refers to the maggot as symbol of corruption, but a maggot is also a rather old fashioned term for an obsession. Several of the characters have obsessions, including the questioning attorney who is more interested in allegations of homosexuality than in the murder itself. But the novel itself arose out of an obsessive picture in Fowles' mind, of a group of horse riders in a wilderness. This became A Maggot's opening scene, and it is an arresting image. The literal meaning of the word also makes a surprising appearance.

While those who do not know Fowles' work will probably pick up A French Lieutenant's Woman or The Magus, A Maggot is definitely worthwhile reading for anyone who enjoyed either of the other two novels.(less)

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Sep 21, 2012 Krit rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Reading this was not an experience I would retract, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. The style of Q & A throughout most of the book was bold and at first daunting, but I think Fowles pulled it off well. All the characters came to life, and it was interesting to hear accounts of the same intriguing events told from different characters. I felt the pay off for reading the book never came, the investment of finding out the answer to the mystery that took place, never happened. But I reali...more

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Dec 02, 2010 Tina rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Insomniacs

The first half of this novel was engrossing and intriguing, but by about page 300 (in my edition) it started to grow very very dull. The last fifty pages would be an insomniac's dream, because it would cure them completely. Why a modern novelist would choose to not tone-down the (authentic-sounding but downright boring) religious prattle is beyond me. Even the big "revelation" of what the title refers to lost most of its luster because the religious crap smothered it (no, I'm not saying religion...more

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Jul 29, 2012 Cristina rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I think this has to be one of my favorite books. What this book spoke to me was far beyond a sci-fi story: to me it dealt with topics like equality between genders and races (the feeling you get while reading the book is just how unfair people were treated according to gender and wealth and just how bedazzeled the lawyer is when the woman describes her journey in the utopian world/heaven? where everyone is equal.). I was very much amused at how people disregarded the book as a mediocre attempt a...more

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Jun 25, 2012 Riff rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: highly-recommended

A Maggot: Another masterpiece from the intimidating mind of John Fowles. In this twisting mystery set in the early 18th century, Fowles is up to his old tricks with his magnificent cerebral teasing. A small group of travellers are on a very mysterious journey that will dance with life, death and madness - and where nothing is what it seems. It feels a playful old yarn until Fowles pulls the rug from under you, and we become deeply engaged with what, in modern times, would be termed a police inve...more

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Feb 25, 2010 Gary rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

If you're looking for something a little different, here is an odd book - odd format, odd language, odd events. Most of the way through the book, I would have been unable to tell you to what genre The Maggot belongs: Historical? Occult? Mystery? Gothic Thriller? Science Fiction?

It was not an easy read for me, due to the archaic language, but worth the effort, I think. A significant part of my enjoyment from reading this novel came from my struggle with the language, and it was the language that...more

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Mar 30, 2009 Trent Fingland rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

An interesting book of historical fiction, written almost entirely in the form of Question/Answer; A 17th century lawyer, Henry Ayscough, interrogates various parties in an effort to discover the whereabouts of a missing son of an important and never-named nobleman.

This format by itself kept me pretty glued up until the three-quarters point, where I experienced a one-two punch to my enthusiasm due to the Q/A losing its initial charm combined with the questioning of the most key of key witnesses...more

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Oct 04, 2010 Abby rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Uffff. You know how you're reading a book and you really like it? and it's beautifully written and the plot is interesting but believable and easy to follow? and then halfway through the book there's a UFO abduction? and you're like "what the hell- this is 18th century england ! no UFOs in 18th century england!" but you keep reading because you assume you had a stroke and imagined the UFO scene? but the UFO scene doesn't go away and then in the end the UFO abduction was really Jesus ? yeah, it's...more

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Jan 23, 2013 Stela rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: anyone

Shelves: favorites, postmodernism, reviews

The make-believe history is a well-known trick of the postmodernist literature. Here we have a celebrated criminal in Margaret Atwood’s “Alias Grace”, a famous gangster in Mircea Mihaes’ “Woman in Red”, a brought to life portrait in Tracy Chevalier’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring”, and in all these novels and others reality and fiction are blended beyond recognition, to create literature’s second reality. A sort of non-fiction novels, to borrow Truman Capote’s very deceptive term.
However, whether t...more The make-believe history is a well-known trick of the postmodernist literature. Here we have a celebrated criminal in Margaret Atwood’s “Alias Grace”, a famous gangster in Mircea Mihaes’ “Woman in Red”, a brought to life portrait in Tracy Chevalier’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring”, and in all these novels and others reality and fiction are blended beyond recognition, to create literature’s second reality. A sort of non-fiction novels, to borrow Truman Capote’s very deceptive term.
However, whether the above-mentioned works concentrate upon the historical figure itself, John Fowles imagines only its background, his novel illustrating, apparently, what made Anne Lee become the founder of the Shakers.
I said apparently because this could be an interpretation of sorts, but of course things are never as simple as they appear in a postmodernist book. History is only a source like any other, but the credibility factor doesn’t function in the same way. The truth of art has nothing to do with the historical truth, even when it copies its methods of investigation.
And the methods ARE similar to those used by a historian or a detective in quest for the truth. The disappearance of an important personage is investigated thoroughly, which gives the narrator the perfect pretext to exercise different styles: juridical, administrative, journalistic, epistolary, dramaturgic, scientific, he tries them all with the same dexterity and all are maggots, possibilities. Just as the many layers of the narrative: historical (the cuts from Historical Chronicle 1736, the information about economy, population, garments in 18th century England, etc.); science-fictional (the maggot-like machine and the time travel), religious (the Quakers, the Protestants, etc.), detective (Ayscough’s investigation) all novels in nuce, hence – maggots.
Last but not least, both in the Prologue and Epilogue, the narrator reveals his sources (the obsession with an image, a picture of a woman and Anne Lee’s origins) insisting upon the same idea that the book is only a maggot. Because a work of art never leaves the artist’s hands fully developed, consequently needing the public to maturate? Or because everything has to grow, beings and ideas? On the other hand, the main character of the book also mentions the maggot twice: first, as a symbol of decay, punishment and death, second as an instrument of salvation. And the last words of the novel refer to it, too:
« I mourn not the outward form, but the lost spirit, courage and imagination of Mother Ann Lee's word, her Logos; its almost divine maggot. »
A divine maggot – that is, the Logos born under the writer’s quill but growing in significance under the readers’ eyes.
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Oct 03, 2008 Jessica rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

At first I thought the maggot was something figurative, then a woman's testimony told me it was something real. The whole time I read this book, I was attempting to discover what it was really about, but all I concluded is that it's a good bed time book; which means I fell asleep shortly after nearly every time I tried reading it. I did not want to leave it unfinished because I loved the first book I read by Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman, so I kept truckin'. It is not a good book, althou...more

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Aug 17, 2008 Robert rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It gives a good glimpse into the life of the English people during the early 18th century as a group of travelers are followed around the Devonshire countryside. None are what they seem. A mysterious rendezvous is to take place and one of the travelers is murdered, one disappears, and the remaining three face a murder trial. In the search for truth through the depositions of an arrogant and condesending barrister, Ayscough, you see his contempt for the witnesses. The social classes are easily di...more

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Jun 08, 2008 Al rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I like John Fowles's work, so I must have bought this at a book sale in some distant past. I finally read it, and now I see why it has not been included among his best. He claims he wrote this based solely on a picture he had in his mind of a group of people traveling through an English wilderness is the early eighteenth century. I believe that. The plot (I use the term loosely) develops excruciatingly slowly.
Evidently Mr. Fowles couldn't make up his mind how to write the book, or perhaps he...more

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Aug 16, 2008 Michele rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'd never even heard of John Fowles before I started reading post WWII Brit lit criticism, and then he popped up all over the place. He's better known for The French Lieutenant's Woman, but I chose this book to read first because it seemed more relevant to my purposes (of course I read this for a reading list, what else do I read anything for? Oh, yeah, and bookclub)

It's a strange story - a combination of epistle, deposition and narration, that tells the story of what is either a science fiction...more

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Sep 21, 2009 Craig rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

John Fowles' last novel, and certainly his toughest. This is a sort of hybrid Canterbury Tales / Close Encounters. I don't pretend to understand what Fowles attempted here -- all I could decipher was a group of trekking pilgrims in 17th (?) century (it actually felt like an earlier time than that -- almost medieval) England who witness an extra-terrestrial visitation/abduction and have not the language, nor experience to comprehend it. Fowles, interestingly, creates a narrator investigator who t...more

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Apr 16, 2013 Alex_k rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It's cerebral, self-conscious, postmodern even - yet its central characters are as alive as in great traditional novels. And it's gripping from the start. It must be Fowles' special gift - as in the French Lieutenant's Woman, he tells us it's all a game, but the reader cannot shake it off as he would a mere maggot. It gets under one's skin.

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Oct 31, 2010 Kate rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I second Abby's review.
I was very intrigued by the slowly developing murder mystery that this novel appeared to be. When it took a sci-fi turn, I was puzzled, but continued, in hopes.
With the final zigzag into historico-religiosity, I sadly said, "Fool me twice, shame on me" and stopped reading. A disappointing conclusion to a promising start.

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Oct 02, 2012 Tyson rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A very compelling read about religion (Shakers) visions, philosophy and society in 18th century England. Much of the novel take the form of questions and answers as a lawyer questions several people in turn about the disappearance of one of the characters and the death of another. The book unfolds in clever and intriguing ways. I would like to go back to the Magus and see if there are any parallels in the images of the visions and the dreamlike vision sequences in the Magus.

Taking a break form...more

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Sep 08, 2009 Christopher O'Brien rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: modern-fiction

Interesting thing. No clear cut final answer about what really happened; many pages of testimony, all disagreeing; seems to imply that the girl saw extraterrrestrials in the middle ages, but not confirming it. Seems the main idea is to illustrate, by showing us what the different styles of characters say and do, what different classes of people were like and what their perceptions were like, and WOULD be like in the face of extraordinary events--like Coleridge's project in Lyrical Ballads, 1799....more

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Jun 15, 2012 Tim Petersik rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Fowles is original. Who else would include facsimiles of 1700s "newspapers" to set a mood? On the surface, this seems a bit like Canterbury Tales, but it gets weird quickly...in a good way.

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Mar 17, 2010 Woc2 rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

1800's suspense, with lots of ol'english dialects (not the beer) and a hint of the occult. Is there a movie on this? If not, it would be great to see it.

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Apr 06, 2013 Sam Spillyards rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A very interesting book. A bit grotesque at times, but the presentation of the story is very novel.

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Jul 09, 2011 Billycongo rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, owned

The name and the format of the book were off-putting. It presents a story from multiple points of view that don't always agree with each other. This is a book that rewards patience, but doesn't give clear cut answers. So don't start this book if you want a tidy ending. Yes, it's a bit meta, but that doesn't mean it's not enjoyable.

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Dec 30, 2011 Gerry rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A surprising book, not what what I expected from Fowles but brilliant none the less.

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Feb 21, 2012 Henry Tegner rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A strange book and not easy to grasp. But I have read it twice so far.

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Oct 23, 2011 Barry Eysman rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

incredible. every Fowles book adds a rewarding hello. none more than this.

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About John Fowles

John Robert Fowles was born in Leigh-on-Sea, a small town located about 40 miles from London in the county of Essex, England. He recalls the English suburban culture of the 1930s as oppressively conformist and his family life as intensely conventional. Of his childhood, Fowles says "I have tried to escape ever since."

Fowles attended Bedford School, a large boarding school designed to prepare boys...more

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