The Collector

⚖The case for it

Clegg is mild, tidy and methodical, and readers say sitting inside that calm self-justification is worse than any raving villain would be: “the creepiest book I have ever read,” “a truly terrifying character.” Then Fowles hands the same stretch of days to Miranda’s diary, and everything that looked controlled from his side reads differently from hers. She is opinionated and manipulative in her own right rather than a passive victim. The butterfly collection is the whole argument about how he sees people. Two people in a room, and readers finish “quite emotionally drained.”

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

Miranda’s diary is where the momentum goes: readers who tore through Clegg’s half describe hers as rambling, and one admits to feeling “sluggish and a little bored.” She is also hard to like, condescending about Clegg’s class and lecturing about art in opinions that read borrowed, since “she has no opinions of her own.” Fowles “beats you over the head” with the class politics rather than letting it show. The prose is “clinical and very matter of fact” for a novel of this reputation. And a convenient windfall hands Clegg his freedom to act.

— the honest librarian

6h

honest hours

9

sittings