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The Collector Book Review

The Collector is a 1963 psychological thriller novel by John Fowles. It was an influential work for the genre and it remains a chilling read today.

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“I hate all ordinary dull little people

who aren’t ashamed of being dull and little“

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The plot follows a lonely young man who kidnaps a female art student in London and holds her captive in the cellar of his rural farmhouse. Divided in two sections, the novel contains both the perspective of both the captor and the captive. The portion of the novel told from Miranda’s perspective is presented in epistolary form while the other section is more straightforward in approach.

This is a very engaging read that has the perfect length and it rarely dragged, though some of Miranda’s sections were a bit too extended, but more on that later. This was probably the first true psychological thriller novel written and it remains highly influential on most subsequent works of literature and cinema. It’s so elegantly written, thematically interesting and psychologically complex that it ended up being both thrilling and insightful.

Frederick Clegg and Miranda Grey are both incredibly well developed and fully fleshed out as characters. The characterization in this book is so incredible, in fact, that it is the biggest reason to read it. This is the driving force of the novel and the prime reason why it works as well as it does. They felt like real people of flesh and blood.

Frederick was somewhat humanized at first, but toward the end his intentions and his true personality came into effect and we realize that he is a true monster. A sociopath with no regard for the rights of others, he would do everything to keep Miranda trapped. The fact that he couldn’t sexually abuse her isn’t a sign of his superior morals, but quite probably of his inability to perform. This was hinted throughout the novel, so it should be obvious for the reader to read between the lines. It was a great choice to have a captor at first be more timid and unassuming, thus Fowles fooled us into thinking he isn’t all that bad, which only made that unexpected ending even more shocking.

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Miranda is the highlight. She is the better-developed and more interesting character of the two – a person whom I could both relate to in certain areas, but find her aggravating in other areas. She thinks of herself with high esteem and she cannot understand how most people aren’t artistically inclined. She holds disdain and pity for the common folk. This is where the main theme of the class divide is brought into play as Frederick and Miranda represent the lower and the higher class respectively. His frustration with his background is probably the biggest catalyst for his eventual wrongdoing.

But back to Miranda. She is a very complex, interesting woman. The second half of the novel is almost entirely devoted to her story that is told though her letters that she wrote while being trapped. The letter became increasingly intense and erratic toward the end, leading to that horrifying conclusion. How she sees art, people and Frederick himself was all quite interesting to read. But I have to say that I found her obsession with her older lover rather annoying. Her constant praise of him got on my nerves quickly and it made those passages difficult to read as she felt too naïve and foolish then. Although those particular letters did impact the novel in terms of pace, they still offered us more added insight into Miranda’s character.

Power and control are the other themes explored here as after all Frederick is in desperate need to retain control over her captive at all points. How the two view art, in particular photography contrasted deftly their vastly different backgrounds, points of view and living experiences. The Collector deals with the titular collecting in an interesting way too by basically juxtaposing Frederick’s butterfly collecting with his intentions toward Miranda herself.

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The Collector was so well written by John Fowles in what was his literary debut. He imbued the novel with so much elegance, insight and a wonderful mix of simple writing style that still has deep themes beneath it. The dialogue is excellent too. The tone of the novel is so versatile, employing suspense and horror, but also playfulness at times. The beginning was a great hook and the ending was terrifying, so the mid section could never quite meet that level of greatness, but it offered us fantastic characterization nonetheless.