A very interesting book by John Fowles, both heartbreaking and beautiful, and also full of plot holes and somewhat incomplete, even ending with a peculiar twist on Victorian novel tradition. In a way the book is a parody of Victorian melodramas, it is definitely a sly parody, a come on that you probably won't notice immediately, because the book reaches parody by simply being completely serious. However when there are plot holes and unexplainable flights of logic you have to understand it's because it is based on Victorian novels that have the same kind of events. It's kind of purposely bad sometimes.

The book itself is about Charles, a well to do English gentleman, who is about to be married to a nice girl named Ernistina (or something along those lines, it's been a while), but he starts to feel trapped and unsure of himself and his station when he sees a beautifully strange woman named Sarah, aka the French Lieutenant's Woman.

He eventually falls in love with her, and various amounts of strangeness and plot twists follow.
I liked the book a lot, it had far too many plot holes, and a silly ending involving the Rossetti's, but despite that I liked it. However as I said the ending is quite terrible, it's very annoying when you read a whole book, enjoy it immensly, then get to the last 10 pages and are disapointed quite thouroughly, and confused a great deal too. Oh well. I have to suggest reading it, even with its' warts however, as it really was a good book for the most part. However not up to task to the Collector and the Magus.

Anyways, I suggest reading all of John Fowles' books, as he really is an amazing author, although he really can't end his books too well, the reading up to the end makes up for the endings.

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