John Fowles
Related: British literature - 1900s literature
Biography
John Robert Fowles (March 31, 1926 – November 5, 2005) was a British novelist and essayist. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Fowles [Aug 2006]
The Collector (1963) - John Fowles
Fowles launched his career with The Collector, which was welcomed with great critical enthusiasm, including that of LJ's reviewer, who found it "a distinguished first novel" (LJ 8/63). Mantissa, on the other hand, was a departure from the author's more popular material and received only a marginal response (LJ 9/1/82). Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
In this chilling archetypal tale of good and evil, a beautiful, idealistic young woman studying art in London is kidnapped by a startlingly ordinary young man who wants only to keep her--like the butterflies he has collected before her. James Wilby is superb as the collector, by turns angry, indignant, whining, and threatening, and the terrified, but defiant, prisoner waging war against her captor while in secret journals struggling to come to terms with her past and present. Despite a lengthy digression on the meaning of art and the British class struggle, this powerful reading of a haunting tale will echo in the reader's psyche long after the words fade away. J.E.T. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine
The Collector is considered cult fiction