June 2012 Selection

Lisa has selected The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles as our book for June 2012. This selection is part of our year of choosing a bestseller from the year of the hostess' birth. The French Lieutenant's Woman was published in 1969.

From Good Reads:

In this contemporary, Victorian-style novel Charles Smithson, a nineteenth-century gentleman with glimmerings of twentieth-century perceptions, falls in love with enigmatic Sarah Woodruff, who has been jilted by a French lover.

Of all John Fowles' novels The French Lieutenant's Woman received the most universal acclaim and today holds a very special place in the canon of post-war English literature. From the god-like stance of the nineteenth-century novelist that he both assumes and gently mocks, to the last detail of dress, idiom and manners, his book is an immaculate recreation of Victorian England.

Not only is it the epic love story of two people of insight and imagination seeking escape from the cant and tyranny of their age, The French Lieutenant's Woman is also a brilliantly sustained allegory of the decline of the twentieth-century passion for freedom.

The Book Snobs Gathering

The Snobs met at Lisa's home on Monday, June 25, for dinner and discussion of The French Lieutenant's Woman. We enjoyed a build-your-own baked potato bar for dinner.

Only about half of the members actually finished this book. We agreed that it was a difficult read. Discussion centered mostly on the fact that John Fowles offered three alternate endings for his lengthy novel. Some of us found that extremely frustrating and felt like, as an author, it should have been Mr. Fowles responsibility to decide how his novel ended. He should not have left it up to the reader to decide. It was odd how he spoke in asides to the reader insinuating that his characters had lives of their own and made different decisions than he intended.