The French Lieutenant's Woman

At first glance, "The French Lieutenant's Woman" is a spicy story of passion set against the brilliantly recreated backdrop of Victorian England. The characters are just as prim, noble, and... spineless. What awaits them - a banal adultery or a... solution to the eternal conflict between duty and feeling? For a less superficial reader, "The French Lieutenant's Woman" is a book-game, a book-test. In the best traditions of postmodernism, Fowles plays not with fictional characters, but with real readers. Each time suggesting a choice on how the events of the novel will unfold, he, as a creator, as a literary demiurge, is not interested in the fate of the plot, but in the personality... of the reader. Will they withstand, the reader, this undeniably captivating and even somewhat dangerous game? "The French Lieutenant's Woman" is a masterpiece that was brilliantly embodied by Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons in the eponymous film.