Coincidentally (?), another book about Victorian adultery. I really enjoyed most of this but got lost, typically, towards the end. Brilliantly plotted and written, for me, until the woman in question disappears from Exeter where Charles expects her to be waiting for him. He eventually finds her in London living with the Rossetti family where, for reasons unclear to me, she rejects him and he leaves, dejected. I wouldn’t be that surprised if I have misunderstood the ending – the pre-preface ‘assure[s] the reader that there are no pagination errors in the final chapter’. But I could find anything so have obviously missed something. But, subject to my confusion about the ending I thought this was a brilliant book – the first ¾, set in Lyme Regis is excellent.
OK, so I have cheated slightly on the ending using Google, who obviously reads better than me, although I can’t re-find the neat summary I read yesterday. There are 3 endings:
Telegraphed after c75%, where he admits his dalliance to Ernestina, after some grief marries her and has a boring conventional life – this is sketched out by Fowles in the text and rejected – otherwise you wouldn’t carry on reading.
Another right near the end where (possibly) she accepts him and then
A third, after a ¼ hour time shift backwards, where she rejects him (I think).
This sort of mucking around with the narrative doesn’t do a lot for me – a narrative is basically and narrative with a beginning, middle and end. If the author can’t make his mind up, I can’t quite see the point! But prior to this, excellent.
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