The Collector by John Fowles – Book Review

The Collector by John Fowles – Book Cover

Frederick Clegg, a butterfly collector and an even grayer-than-gray low-level office clerk, admires Miranda, a lively, aspiring art student, from afar. (Actually, more like he’s just stalking her.) He has no chance with her. In fact, he has no chance with anyone. He’s weird, unfit for life, humorless, and lacks any imagination. However, when he suddenly comes into a large sum of money thanks to a lottery win, brand-new opportunities open up for him. The collector decides to add Miranda to his collection.

Time Has Flown By for The Collector

This is actually the first thing you notice. John Fowles’ novel was first published in 1963. It’s hard to say whether the author himself was stuck in the past or if it’s just his utterly characterless protagonist that creates this slightly unsettling feeling. Either way, it’s not immediately obvious that the story takes place at a time when the Beat era and the sexual revolution were in full swing.

In The Collector, these cultural shifts are only faintly present. Clegg narrates the capture of his new acquisition and his activities with her with an odd, emotionless detachment. It’s as though the butterfly collector, this man without qualities, is somehow stuck outside of time, or at least has remained firmly anchored in the past. Everything about him feels like it belongs to decades earlier.

The early 1960s was a time when class distinctions were largely dissolving in the West. The constant emphasis on the class differences between Miranda, an upper-middle-class girl, and her lower-class, socially aspiring captor doesn’t do much to help the novel’s reception decades later… And Fowles’ characters listen to Bach and Mozart instead of The Beatles…

No Sex, Please, We’re British

The situation gets worse when it comes to sexuality. At this point, The Collector becomes cryptic, full of euphemisms and bashful omissions.

At first, you might think it’s all because of Clegg’s limited knowledge of sex. What can you do, the poor freak is sexually frustrated.

However, the situation doesn’t improve much even when Miranda takes over as the narrator. You might assume that, despite her limited knowledge of sexuality, Miranda, as an art student, would be a bit more outspoken. Well, not really.

Fowles’ book isn’t easy to digest. Thanks to its subject matter, it was probably shocking enough in its time. So, maybe the author didn’t want to push his already scandalized, prudish audience any further.

Well, mission accomplished. (Yawn.)

The Collector Is Crazy as a Loon

John Fowles’ book is a psychological thriller in the purest sense. It’s an exhaustive, detailed dive into the mind of a madman.

Frederick Clegg, the collector, kidnaps a girl simply just to possess her. Period.

Based on the book, you could make quite a long list of all the different psychological issues Clegg is dealing with. Add sociopathy to his sexual frustration, with all its familiar symptoms—like a lack of empathy and complete indifference toward other people.

Fowles adds an extra twist by having Clegg narrate most of the story in the first person: mentally unstable characters are not the most reliable storytellers. As a result, the reader is constantly left doubting how much of what he says can be trusted.

This Girl Is Worth Kidnapping

What do you do when, while writing a book, you get to the end of your story and realize, to your surprise, you’ve only got half a book? I mean in terms of page count. Damn. John Fowles switches perspectives and starts all over again.

At first glance, this doesn’t seem like the best idea. Hearing the same minimalist story again, one that mostly plays out in the characters’ minds and revolves around the psychological games between them? No thanks, that sounds boring!

But Fowles gets lucky. While he does revisit the key events in the struggle between the captor and his victim, the second half of The Collector focuses on Miranda Grey’s past and personality.

At first, you don’t really see the point. Okay, beyond padding the text to make it novel-length…

Miranda’s worldview isn’t the most original (let’s not forget she’s a 20-year-old, inexperienced girl from the countryside). A pinch of nonconformism, a little cautious rebellion, some not-so-strong artistic ambitions, and a vision of the future: a house with a white picket fence, two kids, and a car in the garage.

And of course, her wobbly attraction to George Paston, a much older, not-so-successful artist who seems a bit unworthy object of her affection.

Yet Miranda is incredibly endearing. She’s smart, kind, assertive, and lovable. After a while, it’s impossible to resist her.

And that’s what gives The Collector its true power.

The Collector Gets Into Your Head

Unyielding and inscrutable madness faces off against a female soul that, in all its ordinariness, is still beautiful. And in cases like this, the odds are rarely in favor of the latter.

And if you haven’t done so already, this is the point where you start praying Miranda somehow escapes this ordeal unscathed…

John Fowles’ The Collector is, in most respects, a restrained, somewhat dated work. If you think about what Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs or one of Chris Carter’s characters (see: The Executioner) would do in Frederick Clegg’s place, it’s hard to argue otherwise. But it’s still a seminal novel. If nothing else, you can definitely gather this from the fact that it served as a reference point for many later serial killers…

Rating: 7.2/10

The Collector by John Fowles
283 pages, Paperback
Published in 1998 by Vintage

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