The Collector (Vintage Classics) Book

John Fowles is a true master of literature and The Collector is arguably his greatest novel.

Frederick Clegg is a lonely, grey young man who works as a minor clerk at a nameless city hall and whose one joy in life is collecting butterflies. Clegg is obsessed with Miranda Grey, a beautiful art student, but is unable to talk to her and so makes do with watching her from afar. Clegg's mundane life is transformed dramatically when he wins the football pools and is able to quit his job and move to the country. Unfortunately the peaceful country life is not what Clegg hoped it to be and he soon begins to pine for Miranda. Incapable of actually making personal contact with her, Clegg decides to kidnap Miranda and to hold her in the basement of his house along with his butterfly collection until she grows to love him.

Although I quite realise that The Collector by John Fowles is a widely read and much discussed modern classic, I intend my next comment to be deliberately vague so as not to spoil the novel nor to dissuade anyone from reading it. I do have to say that, I consider the ending of The Collector to be the most subtly devastating of any that I have read. When I reached the end of the novel during my first read though I felt that I could never return to the story again, but I found my mind regularly returning to the events of the book and pondering on the character of Frederick Clegg. Eventually I decided that I had to reread the novel and, on that second pass, I found it every bit as compelling as during my first reading but I noticed several elements and nuances that I have previously missed. I certainly couldn't say that The Collector becomes any easier with repeated readings yet it is such an exceptionally engrossing story and an amazingly astute character study that I have found myself rereading it many times over the years. With so many great works of literature out there, I believe that the novels that can tempt you back time and again are true masterpieces and deserve to be enjoyed by as many people as possible.