The Collector, John Fowles

Well. I finished this one in just a few days. It's been quite a while since I've finished a book that fast, actually. It's a massively compelling read.
I bought a copy for a friend for the occasion of his birthday, knowing from various sources that it would be a novel right up his alley. As I'm the jealous sort I couldn't have him go and read it and not go and read it myself, mainly because I felt I already had dibs on this author. Fowles' The Magus is still one of those books I need to get around to reading and as I still haven't touched my copy of that one (mainly because it looks so hugely daunting) I thought this would also be a good way to introduce myself to Fowles' writing style and methods, take away some of that 'looming' quality, see?
But where I originally picked up my copy (of the Magus) (and from the same place I bought this one at, also from the Grim bookshop, remember that place?) on its reputation of having some meta-elements and a deep ambiguous psychological story, and of course Loopingworld's in-depth write-up of it, I didn't actually know much about this one.

The Collector is the story of a  man who kidnaps a young woman to keep her in his basement.

It takes place over a period of something like 2 months and, for the most part, in four segments. In the first the man swiftly outlines his initial fascination with the woman, the circumstances leading up to the kidnapping and the period of him holding her prisoner for a period of about 6 weeks.

In the second we double back to within a week of the capture from the point of view of the woman.

In the third we have the resolution followed by a short, open-ended epilogue.

So, as I said; I read this really quick, as it was a very engaging and engrossing read. Maybe it was the first-person perspective, maybe Fowles just reads like magic (which bodes well for The Magus).
But as a side-effect of this quick reading I must admit I find I have very little to say.
I wasn't disturbed at any of what was on display, I wasn't appalled, I wasn't surprised. In fact, the resolution seemed pretty much a foregone conclusion, if not exactly in the manner as it played out. The collector is one of those novels to cast a long shadow. In specific, it is known for influencing many a serial killer, kidnappers and their ilk. As such, it seemed to me as if I'd seen or read this thing many times before.

At the Serial Killer convention,

from Neil Gaiman's Sandman.

The writing style is a good one though.

We actually have two different styles here, our kidnapper Clegg's, ordered, matter of fact, void of much embellishing, and our victim Miranda's, which is submitted to us in a diary-format, and which is occasionally filled with some quite beautiful prose and because of her artistic nature, some slap-dash creativity (read: QnA/script-style dialogue). Despite that, I must admit that I found Clegg's point of view rather magnetic, very much in the moment, whereas Miranda's was filled with such extraneous drivel (it was all the art talk that did me in), endless, pointless retrospection and ideas, that I simply had no interest in it. It's a plot not much driven by character but there's so much of it on display with her that, though I ended up caring about her, I didn't actually ever end up liking her.

By first introducing us to her character from Clegg's point of view, only to then switch to hers, halfway through the novel, we meet her side of things with some fixed sentiments having formed. That way, the more we read her point of view, we find that most of our preconceptions have gone out the window. It was nice to feel wrong-footed occasionally, but I again have to confess to just having ended up frustrated with her. She's an intelligent person who through the enforced isolation comes to seem very self-aware, but though neither character ends up quite understanding the other, as a reader, with our bird's eye view on the proceedings, we end up understanding quite a bit more of Clegg's motives, even those motives to which he's blind himself, than Miranda, who just can't let go of her preconceptions, opinions and bias.

It's a great work, an incredibly well written and interesting read, but, because of its age, it might not seem like it's got such a good story. Still, I'm very happy to have given it a go.