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A Maggot

John Fowles

3.58 · Rating details · 2,913 ratings · 155 reviews

"A Maggot" is not a historical novel in the normal sense. It begins as a quirk or obsession (a 'maggot' in the archaic sense of the word) which finds its setting in the second wave of Protestant Dissent in England. It takes shape as a mystery - a compelling investigation of unaccountable motives and deeds - which leads through beguiling pathos to a startling vision at its ...more

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Paperback, 460 pages

Published 1996 by Vintage Classics (first published 1985)

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Jul 23, 2011 mark monday rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mnemonic-devices, into-the-past, these-fragile-lives

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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Mar 24, 2011 William2 rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, 20-ce, uk

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 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 experienced during that journey 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 is truth. 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. ...more

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Aug 08, 2012 Terry rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, historical-fiction

_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 _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.
...more

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Oct 15, 2017 Chris_P rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Apparently, A Maggot was the result of two dicisive factors. The one was the clear, yet uninvited image that once popped into Fowles' mind, of a group of people travelling on horseback in the middle of nowhere, as he informs us in the prologue. The other one was his admiration for Ann Lee, the founder of a strict yet especially alternative religious group, the Shakers. Although an atheist, Fowles had enough clarity to discern the wisdom behind their religious practices and acknowledge the necess Apparently, A Maggot was the result of two dicisive factors. The one was the clear, yet uninvited image that once popped into Fowles' mind, of a group of people travelling on horseback in the middle of nowhere, as he informs us in the prologue. The other one was his admiration for Ann Lee, the founder of a strict yet especially alternative religious group, the Shakers. Although an atheist, Fowles had enough clarity to discern the wisdom behind their religious practices and acknowledge the necessity of the new in opposition to the old. The creation of something that takes us one step further from the obsolete corpse of a past state.

What starts as a whodunnit mystery novel, soon takes a turn towards far more obscure and deep paths. The biggest part of the novel is written in the form of an interview, as the lawyer questions the various suspects in order to uncover the truth behind the servant's death and the mysterious disappearance of a certain prominent person. In between these interrogations, there are parts of a somewhat detached, script-like third-person narrative which, as it seemed to me, serve as a way to sober the reader and temporarily relieve them of all their emotional processes, in order to make space for new ones. Like an emotional flush of some sort. They also give the author the chance to state some of his views on the society of the past and the -not so different- one of the present.

As is the case with both of the other of his works I've read (The Magus and The Collector), A Maggot's plot is mostly developed through the perspective of its characters. Which means that what we read is what they perceive as the truth. Which also means that few things are actually cleared up in the end and what matters most is what the reader makes of what is written. Another characteristic of Fowles' writing that is present here, is the fight between two sociological and historical tendencies, expressed through the characters. Indeed, Fowles' characters are not just fictional people. They're symbols that concentrate in them entire theories, movements, philosophies and historical turbulences. When two of them converse, it's like the clash of two armies of which only one will remain standing in the end, and not without casualties.

The more of his books I read, the more I see that not only his storytelling, but also his genius use of semiotics make Fowles one of the most brilliant, if not as famous as he deserved perhaps, writers of the late 20th century, and A Maggot is yet another example of his brilliance. ...more

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Jul 18, 2020 Luís rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: magical-realism, historical-fiction, thriller-crime, fantasy, uk-and-related, 2020-readings

The Maggot is a hypnotic novel, which as you sink into it, becomes more and more sibylline. But whatever, there are some books that we like not to understand, saying that there must be something in there more significant than yourself, like the repressed unconscious.
Nicholas d'Urfé, a young Oxford graduate, a womanizer, has a little existential crisis and embarks on a teaching position on the Greek island of Paxos. There, he meets a certain Conchis, a mixture between a somewhat barred Aristotle ...more

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Mar 19, 2008 Izzy rated it really liked it · 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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Oct 04, 2010 Abby rated it it was ok · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Nov 06, 2009 Stela rated it it was amazing · 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
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 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. ...more

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Mar 04, 2014 Sera rated it liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to Sera by: Bookish

Shelves: library, literary-fiction, 1001-books

I found this book to be very strange. At the end of the book, there is an author's note, wherein Fowles describes what he was trying to accomplish when writing the novel. Instead of the note providing an illuminating experience, I found myself scratching my head even more, because I didn't really buy into Fowles attempt to get to B from A.

I found the first half of the book to be pretty interesting, but the second half - not so much. The book is a murder mystery and what happened in relation to t ...more

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Oct 16, 2020 SAM rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction-etc, 2020

This was a great story until a certain incident turned this into a science fiction story. I lost interest towards the end.

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Apr 09, 2015 Leonie rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction

A shaggy dog story. John Fowles' prologue tells us the book began with an image of travellers on horseback. For years, though finding this image striking, he was prevented from doing anything with it because he didn't know who the travellers were or where they were going. Then he worked out a way of writing a book anyway without knowing this.

It's eighteenth-century England and the travellers are journeying through the countryside for some hidden purpose. Then this purpose is accomplished. We st A shaggy dog story. John Fowles' prologue tells us the book began with an image of travellers on horseback. For years, though finding this image striking, he was prevented from doing anything with it because he didn't know who the travellers were or where they were going. Then he worked out a way of writing a book anyway without knowing this.

It's eighteenth-century England and the travellers are journeying through the countryside for some hidden purpose. Then this purpose is accomplished. We still don't know what it was, but one of the party is dead, the rest are scattered and the most important member, a rebellious son of an aristocrat, is mysteriously disappeared for good. A lawyer, struggling to establish what has become of the aristocratic son, carries out interrogations which take up most of the novel in Q and A format. The book is the kind where the gratification of curiosity, being constantly deferred just a little longer, leads you round and round a maze. I knew it was that kind of book, and a deliberately puzzling, odd book, but I guess I was surprised by how completely it was that sort of book. It doesn't feel incomplete or badly realised but it feels like what it says on the tin. An uncategorisable whim with a mind of its own.

It's really fairly clear what happens, actually. In a way. The prostitute who was being taken along for mysterious reasons reverts violently back to her Quaker upbringing following the mysterious crucial incident in a cave. She has a fairly standard weird religious vision. The non-standard part, from our point of view, is the spaceship. It's fairly obvious the disappeared character has gone away with the spaceship, it's just that the context and form of the novel has not prepared us for being expected to believe it.

Then there's an earnest epilogue about Quakers and Shakers where Fowles tells us the proceding farrago about prostitutes and devil-summoning etc was his way of introducing the founder of the Shakers, an historical figure he's fond of, as the prostitute's daughter. It's this element that makes the book so odd; the match of destination and method of getting there. The stuff about dissenting religion and its expression of political subversiveness and a belief in equality amid an oppressive eighteenth century was less interesting than it should have been. I think partly this was because of Fowles' authorial explanations of the eighteenth-century mind-set, and how they worshipped property and status and the lower classes had no concept of self-assertion or self-awareness. I'm sure it's substantially true but something about the way Fowles said it made me want to argue. I know more about the nineteenth century, insofar as I know anything about anything, but I see this kind of society as less aware of its own antipathy to much biblical teaching, more safely wrapped up in ways of bypassing that realisation. Fowles has the situation a shade too black and white for it not to be artistically irritating even if historically accurate. Fowles is well-known for his metafictional touches, such as these comments on the culture of his historical settings. It was interesting on reading Ivanhoe to see that there are actually a lot of similarities between Scott and Fowles’ techniques in this respect.

It’s like Fowles’ other novels that I’ve read in plenty of aspects. There’s the gossipy pleasure of putting the story together through lots of different narratives and perspectives. There’s the same trope from The Magus where characters perform misleading narratives for hire as a plot device. Fowles’ taste for mysterious women with a mixture of victimisation and agency seems familiar. ...more

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Mar 22, 2013 Bettie rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: tbr-busting-2013, paper-read, spring-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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May 27, 2012 Riff rated it it was amazing · 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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Sep 05, 2016 William rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Very strange and contrived. Unsatisfying ending.

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Mar 17, 2018 Sam rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, historical-fiction, contemporary-fiction, crime, mystery, thriller, myth-and-magic, proper-books

Once again Fowles has written a superb story that combines so many different aspects and genres I don't really know where to begin. Fowles starts with an image of 5 riders, unnamed and mysterious, then one turns up dead and another vanishes. So begins the investigation into those May events, told through Q & A sessions with witnesses, letters from the investigator to the judge and newspaper articles following the investigation. Don't expect to have your questions answered though as Fowles leaves ...more

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Feb 23, 2014 Wendy rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books, literary-fiction

This is my 3rd John Fowles book, and I never fail to find him interesting. He seems to like to take well-trodden genres (Victorian romance in The French Lieutenant's Woman, historical who-done-it here), lull you into a sense of familiar normalcy, before blasting you with a cold bucket of meta-fictiony post-modernism. This time I was ready for it, and for the most part enjoyed the ride. I suspected that this book wasn't at all what it was pretending to be, and tried to read between the lines. Her ...more

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Dec 20, 2014 Joseph rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A magistrate's inquest, in the form of a discourse and dialogue, into a possible murder and a suicide, is the setting for an imaginative novel about the mother of Ann Lee, the founder of the Shaker sect. Written in archaic 18th c. English, Fowles proves he has a fine ear and feeling for the language; the story maintains suspense and drama throughout, as well as giving the spirit of Christian dissent in the very rigid and harsh English society. His last novel, and possibly the testament of his be ...more

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Jan 03, 2014 Heather(Gibby) rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-to-read

This is a really tough book for me to review, because I am not quite sure that I got it. Or if the point of the book was that you were not supposed to get it. It starts out straight forward enough and enjoyably as a historical mystery novel. We know that the characters are not as they appear, and that there will be truths unveiled as we go along. We know there is a murder, and a disappearance, but then -what? This book sucks me in without ever satisfying my curiosity, and then goes off into some ...more

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Jan 08, 2016 Mark Joyce rated it liked it · review of another edition

A frustrating and ultimately annoying book. I found it gripping until about four fifths of the way in (hence the slightly grudgingly awarded three stars), at which point it disappeared up its own post-modernist arse and morphed into a tedious dialectic on the themes of selfhood, gender and some bollocks about the holy trinity. Without wishing to give anything away it seems the full appreciation of A Maggot rests on having at least a passing affinity with the theology and practices of the Shakers ...more

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Jul 29, 2012 Cristina rated it it was amazing · 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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Dec 26, 2018 Nick Davies rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2018

This moved from starting off a little difficult to get on board with, but encouraging to do so, through some very intriguing and unusually compelling events, but ended up a bit confusing and disappointing before disappearing up its own arse in the end. I wasn’t expecting anything other than a complex literary novel from Fowles, with plenty fable and history thrown in, I’ve read and enjoyed others by the same author. This just got on my nerves three quarters of the way through - I was expecting a ...more

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Feb 24, 2021 Ian rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Have been thinking about reading this for a while, but it was always too far down the list and was rather put off by The Magus, the only other work by Fowles I've read. Was going to have mixed feelings, but the conclusion pulled themes together well: indictment of established religion, social injustice. the inadequacies of language and suchlike. Even in The Magus, as here, Fowles is a brilliant and engaging expository writer. The story, well, perhaps eccentric, but much more tolerable than The M ...more

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Oct 25, 2019 Kevin Tindell rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I've struggled to complete this book on several occasions over the years but on the basis that I love other John Fowles titles I was determined to finish this time. I have to say it was a bit of a struggle but I ploughed on regardless. An interesting 'who done it' set in the 18th century but the language confounds and it was just too much effort. I will love The Magus forever but this just doesn't compare.
...more

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Feb 17, 2013 Simon Mcleish rated it really liked it · 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 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. ...more

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Aug 13, 2019 Damian Moloney rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Interesting but challenging.

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May 27, 2020 Kevin Tole rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, history, britlit

The more I re-read of Fowles, the more I am impressed by the skills of a consummate storyteller completely at one with his craft. This was Fowles’ last novel published in 1985. It is allegedly harder to get hold of than his other books for some reason.

The Prologue from Fowles gives us two bits of key information. A Maggot can be the larval stage of a winged creature or, a little more anachronistically, a whim or a quirk which enters the thoughts and cannot be shifted. The book was written in res ...more

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Sep 29, 2008 Luke rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2020

I'm a bit of a fan of Fowles because of the creepy perfection of his first novel, The Collector, and the madness of The Magus, a book spent a couple of years pushing on people at any opportunity.

I wasn't quite so taken with A Maggot the first time I read it, a dozen or so years ago. But as I've aged, I think I've come to appreciate it a lot more, as this reread was supremely enjoyable. I guess the fact that the author has taken a kitchen-sink approach to the work – it's variously a mystery, his I'm a bit of a fan of Fowles because of the creepy perfection of his first novel, The Collector, and the madness of The Magus, a book spent a couple of years pushing on people at any opportunity.

I wasn't quite so taken with A Maggot the first time I read it, a dozen or so years ago. But as I've aged, I think I've come to appreciate it a lot more, as this reread was supremely enjoyable. I guess the fact that the author has taken a kitchen-sink approach to the work – it's variously a mystery, historical record, SF exploration, class critique and theological query – ensures that there really is something for everyone here.

The title doesn't refer to the common, flesh-consuming meaning of the word. It's the archaic variant: a fancy, or even an earworm. A quirk, a thing of consuming interest. As a result, it's unsurprising that Fowles can't help but insert himself into the text at points, so enthused is he about the things he'll tackle in this sixth novel. Given that I'd always imagined him as a bit of a stand-offish, pip-pip-eh-what bloke, hearing such enthusiasm is a bit staggering, but welcome (albeit surprising).

The story, with its travellers moving through a landscape on an undisclosed mission, brings older tales of seclusion and secrecy, of fellow-traveller backstory to mind. It is, after all, the 1700s, as inserted pages from The Gentleman's Magazine will corroborate. It's a period where one's personal devotions can bring ruin, unless the insulation of either station or sterling can protect you. It's a time where there's intellectual questing, and widespread poverty; where virtue is often a sham, played for public benefit. Fowles makes no bones that the earthiness – and striving to surpass it – is the key design of the work. I mean, where else would you learn about underwear and spiritual transformation in the same place?

As is often the case in Fowles, there's more going on than meets the eye. Here, for example, the narration is presented differently than in most of his other works: actual stretches of the type of narration you'd expect in a novel are few. Instead, most of the work relies on inquisitorial records – numerous questions and answers from varying parties with various views on what's actually happening – and thus sows mystery through documentation. The pieces of straight narrative, few as they are, provide glue to weld the Q&As together, to underscore the fact that despite the flights of fancy that occur within, the culmination of this work involves individuals who actually existed.

So what's real? What's sham? What's the result of bedazzled lower orders and overly-theatrical lords? Stuffed if I know. But that's kind of the point. A Maggot lives up to its name. It burrows in, leaving more questions than answers; a permanent literary itch created from curiosity. ...more

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Aug 19, 2008 Jessica rated it did not like it · 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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Sep 11, 2016 Octavio Solis rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. I'll amend my review at a more convenient time, but this work dug its maggot deeply into me. Fine and infuriating novel. ...more

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Aug 16, 2019 Garry Nixon rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The publication of this novel - by the author of The Magus, - was quite a big event. Beautiful prose, character development, atmosphere, but the denouement, that was just plain daft.

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About John Fowles

John Fowles

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John Robert Fowles was born in Leigh-on-Sea, a small town in Essex. He recalled the English suburban culture of the 1930s as oppressively conformist and his family life as intensely conventional. Of his childhood, Fowles said "I have tried to escape ever since."

Fowles attended Bedford School, a large boarding school designed to prepare boys for university, from ages 13 to 18. After briefly attendi ...more