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Copy/paste the text below into your blog. <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56034.The_French_Lieutenant_s_Woman?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="The French Lieutenant's Woman" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1170452806m/56034.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56034.The_French_Lieutenant_s_Woman?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">The French Lieutenant's Woman</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/10039.John_Fowles">John Fowles</a><br/><br/> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/16513806?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a> rating: 5 of 5 stars<br/>“Darwin’s phrase cryptic coloration: survival by learning to blend with one’s surroundings – with the unquestioned assumption of one’s age or social caste. Or we can explain this flight to formality sociologically. When one is skating over so much thin ice – ubiquitous economic oppression, terror of sexuality, the flood of mechanistic science – the ability to close one’s eyes to one’s own absurd stiffness was essential.” Page 145 <br/> <br/>This book was superb. Fowles draws the reader into the story immediately through his use of imagery; if I were a painter I could confidently recreate every scene and person in this book. Alas, I am not, but his writing did more than just describe the scenery and characters. The interior battles the two protagonists fight in search of a meaning in their lives during the Victorian era transcend time and place. Fowles recognized this, and actually embedded himself within his work of fiction by speaking directly to the reader and near the end, he revealed himself as a character faced with his own indecision. <br/> <br/>The quote above was my favorite lines of text in the novel. The theory of cryptic coloration is true, both in the Victorian era and in 2008. How many people appear to close their eyes to the world and just go with the flow? Most people I know or have observed: and why? The answer is simple: it is easier than demanding to discover a real sense of who you are because traversing down that path is difficult and very long. Recently I just finished the HBO series The Wire which has a cast of over 100 characters, all of which are ingrained in one institution or another. However, David Simon (another great writer) displayed the rejection of cryptic coloration in only one character: Lieutenant Daniels, who stepped down from his position because he was asked to falsify statistics which would further corruption in the police department. Now, this was an altruistic decision and one may argue that the characters in The French Lieutenant’s Woman decided to refuse cryptic coloration for less noble causes, but it is not so. Fowles is challenging us to refuse just surviving by learning to blend in with one’s surroundings and he does it through his unique writing style. I look forward to reading more James Fowles, and highly recommend this book. <br/> <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/947109?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>