The French Lieutenant's Woman

I just finished this book. It's good. It's real literature. The writer breaks the usual rules of writing in several ways; sometimes to my annoyance and sometimes to my pleased surprise.

I found this book well-paced for the first several chapters and then I found it excruciatingly slow. At chapter 20 I would have put it down except for a timely telephone conversation with my mom in which she wisely told me to give it more time. At about chapter 25 it picks up and becomes much more interesting. I read the last chapter in a mad dash and upon setting the book down and having contemplated the story and the ends and the means for several minutes, had to pick it up again and reread the final paragraph. It's a good final paragraph.

In sum, this book is actually an inquiry into the nature of the meaning and purpose of life. It's dressed up in a droll little tale of love and integrity and lessons learned, but it leads you unexpectedly from innocent, blind youth into a wider, deeper, and wiser maturity. In the end the story falls away like ashes from a fire. My thoughts keep wandering back to the story and to the underlying currents of life that guides it.

It isn't a passing fanciful entertainment piece. While I am feeding the birds tomorrow morning I will be thinking about it, and while I'm driving to work tomorrow afternoon to check the mail, I will still be thinking about it. Then, while I am roasting the chicken I bought today for dinner tomorrow night, I will be thinking about it some more.