1.The Collector  by John Fowles.  Jonathon Cape, 1963.

The Collector is a story about the abduction of a young woman, Miranda Grey, by her secret admirer Frederick Clegg and focusses on the relationship that develops between them as he keeps her captive in his cellar.

     I first came across a reference to this novel in the true account Girl In The Cellar: The Natascha Kampusch Story  by Allan Hall and Michael Leidig, published in 2006. Although the novel was published in 1963, 35 years before  Natascha Kampusch was kidnapped, the fictional events Fowles narrates and the descriptive details of Miranda’s imprisonment presage the factual details of Natascha’s story in an eerie way that leads Hall & Leidig to speculate on whether Natascha’s abductor, Wolfgang Priklopil, had in fact read The Collector at some point.

     The narrative is written in two main sections each representing the first person viewpoint of the two protagonists. A third final section in the voice of Clegg, the kidnapper provides the climax to the story.

     The novel opens by introducing us to Frederick Clegg, a rather nondescript council clerk who was brought up by his aunt and whose sole passion is the collecting of butterflies. He has little interest in women as he is only looking for  the perfect specimen who he thinks he has found in Miranda Grey, an art student who he knows only by sight but whom he has worshipped from afar for a long time. The fantasies he entertains about Miranda are tipped into reality when a chance win on the pools means he can indulge his slightest whim. We learn about Miranda along with Clegg as he gets to know her once he has her in his ‘specimen bottle’ and Fowles carefully develops the kidnapper’s realization that he must now look after his prize, that she is not the perfect creature that he hoped for and we observe his painful (and doomed) attempts to turn her into the image of his dreams.

     Similarly we see Clegg from Miranda’s viewpoint in the diary she keeps, how contemptuous she is of his mediocrity, his inability to learn about art and literature and how she learns to manipulate him in order to gain concessions to make her life in her prison more bearable. As her narrative develops she increasingly voices concerns about her artistic talents and her search for the elusive something that will make her painting ‘art’, something more than technical mastery and the influence of past masters.

    There are complex themes at work in this novel. Although it is perhaps mostly famed for its careful exploration of the relationship of captor and captive in a long term relationship, addressing how a semblance of normality can arise as the captive develops attachment to the captor, the emphasis on class differences between Clegg and Miranda, and the contrast between the artistic personality and the uncultured present consistent subtexts within the narrative that point to other themes.

    There is a pre-occupation with class in both characters with Clegg recognizing his own lowly status in respect to Miranda (although somewhat resentfully) despite his new found wealth, and Miranda’s contempt for him, even though this at times turns into efforts to educate him about art, music and literature. To the twenty-first century reader her attitude seems incredibly patronizing and the stark class differentiation appears irrelevant to our time. We must allow however, for the thinking of the 1960s, when education was heralded as the leveller of class, and questions about whether money and /or education can significantly alter the person one was brought up to be, are still valid today.

    The deeper concern with the meaningfulness of art in Miranda’s narrative presented alongside Clegg’s desire for realistic representation and pleasant music is inextricably linked to the class differences between them but Miranda also identifies her parents and fellow art students as being incapable of appreciating true meaning. For me, the fact that the climax of the novel renders all Miranda’s efforts to capture true art  meaningless because of her captor’s actions, points to the murder of art by mass culture and self-interest as the main theme of the text.

     Nevertheless the book is a joy to read on several levels, permitting multiple interpretations. I was left with many questions. How does art compare with the desire for perfection? Does art have meaning when it can so easily be destroyed, either by the jackboot or by the insistent dilution of popular culture? What is the role of education and money in the business/busyness of art? Can there be art without freedom? These are questions that remain as relevant today as when the novel was written in the early ‘sixties and that make The Collector an important and thought provoking book.

Carol Fenlon

March 2010

      

    

2.  The Outcast by Sadie Jones, Chatto & Windus 2008.

 

 It is difficult to believe that this is Sadie Jones’s first novel, so assured is her style, so convincing are the voices.

 

     Using the 1950s as her setting, Jones exactly captures the stiff upper lip mentality of the middle class that still lingered into the post-war period, where nobody really says what they mean and nasty things are swept under the carpet to be covered with a veneer of polite conversation.

 

     The story begins in 1945 when 7 year old Lewis is introduced to the father he has never really known, the father who returns from a prolonged absence at war. Lewis has been used to a close relationship with his mother and the strict father-son rituals enforced as his father takes control of the household, turn Lewis back to the love he is accustomed to share with his mother, and to the games with his friends, the other local children, including his neighbours, Kit and Tamsin Carmichael.

 

     When a tragic accident deprives Lewis of his mother, he is cut off from any emotional contact. His father is unable to soften towards him and is cut off in his own misery at losing his wife. His child pals feel awkward and unable to talk about what happened, and Lewis is sheltered and excluded from any discussion about his mother’s death. Jones effortlessly draws for us the viewpoint of the child who is bewildered by the behaviour of adults and is powerless to understand or influence events going on around him.

 

     Packed off to boarding school, Lewis retreats into numbness and becomes increasingly estranged from the world around him. His fate is sealed with the advent of his father’s new wife, who although kindly enough, knows nothing of children or the devastation Lewis feels and soon gives up her attempts to break down the walls Lewis builds around himself.

 

     Lewis’s alienation goes unmentioned in the community although everyone is aware that something is wrong with him. There is an undercurrent of uneasy whispers about Lewis’s demeanour, his aggressive outbursts, yet there are other undercurrents too, alcohol abuse is rife, yet accepted as long as it is contained within the bounds of acceptable behaviour and there is domestic violence, but this too must be covered up and contained within the family setting, so that the appearance of normality is preserved.

 

     By the time Lewis is twelve he is emotionally desperate. He resorts to self harm in order feel something and the fear this generates in him leads him to alcohol abuse in order to forget the need to feel. Jones’s narrative traces this journey from damaged child to self-destructive adult with a cutting poignancy that never once slips into pity. Her terse prose reflects the harsh reality of dysfunctional family life.

 

    Although Lewis has become the town scapegoat and eventually commits real crimes for which he must be imprisoned, it is the people around him, with whom he has grown up, who have created the abnormal creature that he has become, Locked in their rigid attitudes and behaviours they cannot do otherwise and have no idea of their culpability. Even Lewis’s own father, tries to do his best for the boy, loves him in his own way, yet is totally unable to show his love, the one thing that Lewis really needs.

 

     Jones tells a terrible story, clearly and concisely,without authorial judgement but implicit in the text is the suggestion that once damaged, it is virtually impossible for the child to recover, without some exceptional demonstration of love. All through the book there are moments when the reader hopes that this will happen, where love might blossom and save Lewis, yet Lewis’s alienation means that he has unwittingly created a persona for himself that only a superhuman person could love unconditionally.

 

     We might look at this novel as describing attitudes from the past, the furtive upstairs- downstairs, double standards of the middle classes that still clung through the 1950s, only being swept away in the freedoms of the swinging 60s, yet self harm and mental health problems, domestic violence, child abuse and alcoholism are still with us today with the added refinements of drug addiction, knife and gun culture and teenage gangs who terrorise their neighbourhoods. This makes the issues raised in The Outcast crucially topical for readers today.

 

Carol Fenlon

January 2010