The Collector

The main hero is disgusting.

[ BOOK IG: @clumsyciel ] overall rating: 4/5 ⭐️ time taken to read: ~2 days number of notes: 121 "She was always criticising my way of speaking. One day, I remember she said, 'You know what you do? You know how rain takes the colour out of everything? That's what you do to the English language. You blur it every time you open your mouth.' " (page 69) TC is written mostly in the perspective of Frederick (Freddie) Clegg. after being raised by his aunt, he is an awkward and antisocial entomologist in his mid-twenties. by a stroke of luck, he wins 70k pounds and uses it to buy a small countryside home in the outskirts of London. he sets the basement up for a captive. his goal? to obtain Miranda Grey, a college student he has grown obsessed with. TC was truly breathtaking for me. in many thriller/crime fiction books, they are often written in the victims' perspective; uncommonly in the perspective of the abuser. TC shows Clegg's true character clearly; a sick and twisted man who thinks that Miranda would fall to stalkholm syndrome. he also seems to somewhat have both a victim and a saviour complex, as he feels horrible when Miranda is rude to him, but takes pride in the times where he 'helps' Miranda during her kidnapping. what is interesting about Clegg is that he tries to 'respect' Miranda's boundaries by not trying to touch her. he provides for her, but he wants to be the only one to see her; to have her. Miranda is no fool. she sees through Clegg's plan almost immediately and uses it to her advantage. she is incredibly smart; and uses Clegg's naivety to slowly manipulate him into doing her bidding. it starts with small things, such as getting him to buy miscellaneous items for her and she earns Clegg's trust. in a way, Clegg views Miranda like how he views the butterflies he has preserved in his work as an entomologist. he wants to keep Miranda dependent and in a sense, pinned onto him. what caught my eye for this book was the book cover for it. it reminded me of The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchison. then i realised after reading TC, that the stories were incredibly similar; an older man with a saviour complex and keeping younger girl(s) hostage. i found Miranda's character a bit conflicting, per se. she views herself in a good light (nothing wrong with some self-confidence!) but keeps herself hung up over a much-older mentor of hers. she always tries to act older than her age in order to 'fit in', or so that the mentor would perhaps make a move on her. finally, the writing style. there were some parts of dialogue without the inverted commas which i found kind of odd, but perhaps it was because this book was written in 1963. however, i did learn many new words and phrases (hence the incredible number of notes above). overall, i do think TC was an amazing book. sick, twisted and the ending was downright chilling to the bone.

couldnt put this book DOWN. i love how the story was written. unreliable narrator x distressed woman captive. love it . LOVESSS IT.

I'm pissed off in the best way

It was not an interesting story. Neither of the two characters were likable .The book was in the psychological mystery genre, but it had many extra and boring parts.

achei um livro de personagem, o plano de fundo do sequestro foi pouco importante pra mim. O que me cativou foi a perspectiva em primeira pessoa de pessoas doentes que pareceu bem real, nisso me lembrou Dom Casmurro e Psicopata Americano. Por incrível que pareça achei muito interessante as partes do GP, me fez pensar muita coisa sobre elitismo e relacionamentos abusivos. O fluxo de leitura foi um obstáculo bem grande e por motivos muito bobos, detalhes que só atrapalhavam o leitor e não adicionavam nada á história. Enredo bem previsível.

A disturbing yet gripping read; one of those novels you want to hurl out of frustration yet continue to read out of curiosity. It provides an insight into the mind of a psychopath, and despite feeling contempt for him, John Fowles has an incredible way of also making you sympathise.

I live and breathe horror. I love Jack Ketchum, Edward Lee, and Clive Barker. I like the psychological stuff. I like the blood. I like horror movies. I thought I was immune. This made me sleep with the light on for two days.

Sommige boeken hadden niet geschreven moeten worden, dit is een goed voorbeeld.

For a debut novel, this is pretty quality. Fowles does a great job of writing from the perspective of a creepy stalker, but an even better job of writing from the view of a desperate, enraged, proud young woman. The horror of this book is how mundane and utterly possible it seems. I hope I never meet my Caliban.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this novel. Initially, I was drawn in and eager to find out what happened to the two characters and as the POV switched it completely transformed my opinion of the characters. A really interesting read and I particularly liked the ending!

This book is haunting. In a way, the tone is so innocent that it just contributes to the creepy and uncomfortable feeling of it all.

I understand that it’s fiction and that I should be rating the writing but wtf all I can think is how gross this book is which is probably the point and I guess I’ll share that some of Miranda’s ideas I get and I like but gross eww I can’t stand that man and even something about a man being the author makes sense because why would anyone else write it

Two Stars A brief synopsis: Ferdinand is a peculiar man who is obsessed with a woman he has never met before. He follows her and watches her from afar and falls in love with everything about her. One day, he just cant take the loneliness anymore and abducts her. This novel follows what happened after the abduction and is told from both Ferdinand's and Miranda's point of view My review: I didnt like the writing style. The plot was good. The events that happened themselves were interesting but the way it was worded and written made it come accross as boring. Also the characters were not likable at all. I think the author wanted to make the reader sympathize with Ferdinand, but to me he seemed entitled and whiny. Miranda wasn't a good character either but I think that was done on purpose. I do not recommend this novel

There is a very creepy story which serves as the cloak for Fowles real message. I will say nothing more. Read it only for the creepy story if you want to.

I just did not enjoy it at all. The writing was okay, not great, until I got to the diary portion. OH MY GOD. I thought it would be great to read the story both from the captor's perspective and the victim's perspective, but Miranda's diary was SO rambling about art and the people she knew and I was just screaming at the book "OH MY GOD, WHO TF CARES?!" I was so relieved to finish that (rather large) portion of the book. Ultimately, not a lot happens. I liked the parallels drawn between him collecting butterflies and him "collecting" Miranda, but there wasn't a lot of substance beyond that. I liked the ending as much as I could have, but it didn't save this book at all imo. An incredibly tedious read.

I read Fowles' The Magus last year and thoroughly enjoyed it so I was hoping The Collector would hold up to the same standards. It was good. It was nothing ground breaking but it kept me reading and it made me want to pick up The French Lieutenant's Woman.