Book Review: The Collector by John Fowles

Read in July 2008, San Jose, CA

I picked up this book from the San Jose Public Library. ‘The Collector’ is the first book I am reading by John Fowles. Although I own his ‘The French Lieutenant's Woman’ I never got to reading it. After having read this book I will never be able to catch butterflies or keep a caged bird. This book has been a journey through the minds of both the collector Frederick/Caliban and his beautiful collection – La Boh`eme Miranda. Frederick collects variegated butterflies and the story unfolds as he makes a new addition to his collection – Miranda, a human, as alive, as beautiful and as free spirited as his beautiful butterflies. The fascinating attribute of this book is that although Frederick is the soul-less devil that kidnaps and imprisons Miranda in the dark basement of his cottage, in a strange way he appears noble, generous, morally upright even. He is an intensely passionate individual, and a man of action. At the end, I am left with a feeling of sympathy for Frederick in spite of his almost diabolical selfishness. Miranda’s free spirit, juxtaposed against the confines of a dark basement, brilliantly flashes in the form of the silent philosophical discourses she has with her diary night after night. Miranda's numerous attempts at escaping from this almost fool proof arrangement that Frederick has put forth, makes me keep going back to my sixth grade chapter in Hindi literature – how the timid deer stages his most vehement fight for survival against none other than the mighty lion when he knows he cannot run any faster to escape. The deer will never win, but it makes me wonder, did it occur to him at death, if not through life, that he had such unfathomable courage as to fight a lion? Did he ever realize what he was capable of?

Miranda was very lonely, captivated in Frederick’s prison, with her loved ones – her family, G.C., her friends at LadyMont so far away. Frederick too was lonely in his own way. There was no one in the whole wide world that cared a damn if he lived or died. Miranda at least had her thoughts to keep company, fiery conversations with G.C. about the New People, art, sex, music and politics. Frederick had nothing, absolutely nothing but his collections. He really was, as Miranda would put it, a vast emptiness curved in a human shape. If I were to weigh their relative loneliness I wouldn't be able to say for sure, which was more tragic. At least they both had hope. Miranda waiting for the day she is free and Frederick waiting for the day he finds in Miranda, the woman whose company he desired.

At the end, I find my heart weeping for Miranda as much as for Frederick. Perhaps the book’s writing style, of first person singular, first used by Frederick and then by Miranda, had a role to play in accentuating that, as if they both were narrating their part of the story to an objective reader.