Be Specific About Out Of Books Daniel Martin
Title | : | Daniel Martin |
Author | : | John Fowles |
Book Format | : | Paperback |
Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
Pages | : | Pages: 704 pages |
Published | : | November 4th 2004 by Vintage Classics (first published 1977) |
Categories | : | Fiction. Literature. Literary Fiction. Classics. Novels |
John Fowles
Paperback | Pages: 704 pages Rating: 3.79 | 2318 Users | 109 Reviews
Representaion Conducive To Books Daniel Martin
Set internationally and spanning three decades, Daniel Martin is, among other things, an exploration of what it is to be English. Daniel is a screenwriter working in Hollywood, who finds himself dissatisfied with his career and with the person he has become. In a richly evoked narrative, Daniel travels home to reconcile with a dying friend, and also to visit his own forgotten past in an attempt to discover himself.
Identify Books In Pursuance Of Daniel Martin
Original Title: | Daniel Martin |
ISBN: | 009947834X (ISBN13: 9780099478348) |
Edition Language: | English |
Setting: | England California(United States) Egypt …more Syria …less |
Rating Out Of Books Daniel Martin
Ratings: 3.79 From 2318 Users | 109 ReviewsWeigh Up Out Of Books Daniel Martin
Really loved bits of this book. The set piece romance when Daniel was a teenager and working on a neighbouring farm, the characterisation of his father the priest, and the travel writing in Egypt (and to a lesser extent, Syria) were excellent. No doubt this is a clever book! Too much, though, were the interminable philosophical and erudite discussions. I found these too much like navel gazing and too little advancers of plot. It will probably be just me. Daniel Martin is not a particularly*Spoiler alert*There are some aspects of this book that are really good and very well written. But there is something fundamentally wrong (for me) when the slippery, dishonest (sometimes) narrator and chief protagonist never gets his comeuppance. Quite the contrary: all the women he has manipulated and cheated seem to forgive him! Mr Fowles seems to want to have his cake and eat it in a way that I find objectionable.Furthermore, the plot seems to peter out after a protracted period of meandering
Having revisited this difficult book after thirty years I ask myself the question _ when did John Fowles become Marcel Proust. Some of his paragraphs went on till the next day and some of his cerebral self-indulgent rants drove me to distraction. But ultimately, his examination of the human psyche through male/ female relationships was nothing short of brilliant. Despite the difficulties, I still love this book.

I read this 3 decades ago during a week-long storm lashed to a cliff top off northern Vancouver Island....the dialogue is so rich, the characters so real. There are so many great passages. Conveying the sense of place is one of Fowles' gifts. He was a naturalist in the true sense, a lover of nature. Skip the first chapter, however.
It took me a while to get into this one-- granted, my standards were high, with Fowles being an all-time favorite, and the difficulty of a book with unannounced polyphonic voices. But once I actually got the hang of Daniel Martin, I found it impossible to put down. Great stuff in here, aesthetics and globetrotting and ideology mixed with stories about really shit teenage romances and your lousy job, with just the right balance of self-deprecation and dignity, snark and heart. Still probably not
It's not Fowles' finest by a long way, but reading this novel merely emphasises that Fowles at his least interesting is (was) still superior writer to a million other authors at their best; and therefore impossible to give fewer than four stars.Daniel Martin, concerned for the most part with tangled romantic relationships, human fallibility and themes of national identity, is probably the closest rendition of the author himself. Dan is a successful Hollywood screenwriter, but that's as far as
This was my third attempt to read this very long novel (704 pp). I got as far as p278 and have decided to abandon it although may still have a fourth attempt one day. I like Fowles, remember struggling with "A Maggot" (just 464 pp) but there I felt I was rewarded in the end. "A Maggot" is a very interesting novel. "Daniel Martin", however, does not seem promising. Where is it going? What am I going to gain if I soldier on? I am bored by this titular scriptwriter who has had some success in film
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