The French Lieutenant's Woman

I am just getting to this review of this book. I read it in October but forgot to review it. I have very little memory of it! So, here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

James Mustich

The story John Fowles tells in his third novel begins on the English seaside at Lyme Regis, Dorset, in 1867. Yet it is told by a wry, erudite narrator who lets readers know he is writing exactly one hundred years later. In a tour de force of storytelling that is transporting, intriguing, and breathtaking in its shifting perspectives, Fowles combines suspense, romance, and invention into an emotionally satisfying and intellectually engaging whole. A master of a storytelling resourcefulness that always has us asking, “What happens next?,” Fowles here recasts the pleasures of the Victorian novel into modern literary dress in a way that only enhances their allure. To cap it off, he offers two endings, challenging the reader’s own ideas of romance, of the rights and wrongs of society’s whims, even of the nature of fiction itself.