Michaela's review
The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
Michaela's review
rating:
recommended for: anyone who loves victorian novels
status: Read in September, 2007
rating:
recommended for: anyone who loves victorian novels
status: Read in September, 2007
The book is set in Lyme, England, with it's wind-swept promenade and small-town feel, as featured in Austen's Persuasion. Most of it's action is concerned really not so much with the wild and invigorating sea as the privacy and fecundity of the forest. The book itself reminds me more of Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence. You have a young man, much like other young men, except that (like Newland Archer) Charles Smithson has a mind that longs for something beyond the ordinary. He feels an affinity with a young woman, Sarah Hoffman, cast out of good society for an sexual liason with a Frenchman. In time, it becomes unclear if Sarah is forced or creating her status as outsider. Unlike a James or Wharton novel, Charles is not absolutely damned for his non-conformism, nor is Sarah...shows that I would enjoy the Victorian novels even more if I had someone with a 1960's rather than 1860's sympathy..
