A young
London office worker, an avid collector, admires a giant butterfly from afar: a
young and radiant student of Fine Arts. He kidnaps her, installs her in his
country house, purchased with his winnings from betting on football results,
and yearns for nothing more than the pleasure of her company. But neither the
champagne nor the caviar nor the new dresses nor the art books make her accept
her prison. Miranda tries to escape, to call for help and, even, to kill
herself. Driven to desperation she offers herself to him. This is a fatal
mistake; you cannot make love to a butterfly. Miranda catches cold and soon
dies of pneumonia. Meanwhile, in the distance, a girl appears who looks like
Miranda and the collector is already considering catching her in his net.
Author: John Fowles was born on March 31, 1926 near London.
He studied French Literature at Oxford. He travelled widely in Europe,
especially in France and Greece. He was much more influenced by French writers
(Flaubert, Camus) than British authors. Fowles’s books have been translated
into many languages and he was named by the Times of London as one of the fifty
greatest British writers since 1945. John Fowles
died in 2005 at the age of 79.
My thoughts: I read this book twelve years ago (August 2006) and I
have been a Fowles fan ever since. I love his writing! I chose this book at
Payot bookstore along with the same author’s novel “The French Lieutenant’s
Woman”, a Victorian-era romance. I read it in French translation. I adored this
novel and remember reading it in one go. Right from the outset this story
surprised, fascinated and deeply disturbed me. The plot remains uncertain and
worrying until the final page. This is really not a fairy tale story but charts
the evil instincts of a criminally insane madman who kidnaps women to remove
boredom from his empty life. This is a very scary story - what freaked me out
the most about this fiction is that it felt like a true story…