
The French Lieutenant's Woman
John Fowles · 1969
A postmodern Victorian romance that offers the reader two endings and asks which love story we prefer: the conventional resolution or the truer, harder one. Fowles interrogates the genre conventions of romance while writing, paradoxically, a genuinely romantic novel. The mystery of Sarah Woodruff is the mystery of love itself.
Romance · the Pro canon
The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.