In John Fowles’ engrossing novel, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, a Victorian gentleman, Charles Smithson, is by turns entranced, befuddled, and devastated by a mysterious woman who is, according to local gossip, the spurned ex-mistress of a French naval officer.There you have the “elevator pitch”, the bare-bones synopsis of what becomes a nautilus-shell of complexity, a maze under which the ground is always shifting. The one fixed point of reference, and a welcome one for readers, is Smithson himself. Educated and affluent,he is a curious dilettante, a gifted amateur naturalist, and a man who deserves a more interesting wife than the shallow Ernestina, to whom he is engaged.The unconventional stirs within Charles. He is insightful enough to recognize the hypocrisy and repression of his era, and through his dabbles in marine biology, his embrace of Darwinism, and above all his relationship with the woman, Sarah Woodruff, he breaks through to the surface of clear thinking in many ways and on many occasions.She, on the other hand, resembles nothing so much as a thoroughly 20th century woman, a woman of the late sixties for that matter — the years in which Fowles wrote this novel— with no Victorian psychobaggage and a complete unconcern for what others think. She is no brave heroine, however, no barrier-busting avatar of a glorious future. At the very least, she is a liar. She exhibits more sado-masochistic tendencies than a shelf full of case studies. She desires, and she repels. She is as reliable as a cat. As a study in psychology, she could occupy a professorial team for years. Only Charles Smithson — because he is Victorian — believes in her essential decency, and he invents rationalizations to fit.What follows, after several years and assorted convolutions, is that the author gives up. Fowles goes interactive on us. This is what might have happened, he reports ..or perhaps it was this other, opposing, solution. Addressing readers directly, he invites us to choose our own ending — but then goes on to conclude the story himself, spiraling off into a situation that makes the book seem less than the sum of its parts. I find this a serious flaw, perhaps the only one in the construction and execution of this fine novel.Fowles combines a gift for driving narrative with a lyrical, limpid prose style. His descriptions are evocative to the point of technicolor. He views the Victorian milieu with the authority of a scholar and the sympathy of a friend. He consistently breaks the fourth wall, addressing his readers in 20th century language and employing contemporary references, and is often very funny in the process: of a Mrs. Poulteney, a monstrous character, he remarks, “There would have been a place in the Gestapo for the lady.”This sort of whiz-bang virtuosity is effervescent fun, for the most part; where Forbes’ wit begins to falter, however, is in his assumption that his modernity, his values or better said anti-values of the sixties, are the last words, to be forever etched in stone. We see this in his many references to Freud, a godhead figure at that time but rendered irrelevant if not unknown since; in his belief that “Man knows everything now,” and that therefore the future will be devoted solely to the pursuit of pleasure; and in condescending statements about “peasants”, among many others. I laughed out loud when he suggested that Victorians were unfortunately benighted in that, unlike “us”, they did not have “the lessons of existentialist philosophy... at their disposal.” Existentialism and Freud: as faded, and dated, as a Fillmore East poster. The times don’t stop a-changing..If you enjoy a complex read, and if you have an interest in things Victorian, you will probably enjoy The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Believe me, this book is better than it sounds, and compelling in the extreme. Just be warned about the ending.