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The Collector

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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Withdrawn, uneducated and unloved, Frederick is a loner who collects butterflies and takes photographs. He is obsessed with a beautiful stranger, the art student Miranda, whom he watches from afar. When he wins the pools, he buys a remote Sussex country house and painstakingly works to make the cellar a comfortable prison. He then calmly abducts Miranda, believing that she will inevitably grow to love him in time if she just gets to know him.

Alone and desperate, Miranda must struggle to overcome her own prejudices and contempt if she is understand her captor and gain her freedom.

Taught and utterly compelling, Fowles' debut novel The Collector was an instant bestseller when it was published in 1963. It is regarded as one of the best thrillers of all time with one of the most terrifying villains to have ever been created on the page.

© John Fowles 1963 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

 Classics Horror Psychological Suspense Thriller & Suspense Scary Exciting Fiction

Critic reviews

He has a magnificent narrative gift...brilliant
A brilliant, unusual theme... Short and spare and direct, an intelligent thriller with psychological and social overtones
Brilliant...an artist of great imaginative power
No book will make you appreciate the great outdoors more than this creepy locked-room horror story
There is not a page in this first novel which does not prove that its author is a master storyteller
All stars
Most relevant
I loved this book, the male narrator read to my liking, the female narrator a bit too slowly, but that could all be fixed quickly and easily. The book in itself is a great read, I definitely reccomend.

Great Book

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Daniel Rigby is perfectly creepy as the narrator of the first half of the book. Some reviewers haven't enjoyed Hannah Murray as Miranda, but I thought she was excellent. A claustrophobic and genuinely upsetting performance.

An alarming read, with two excellent narrators

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This book is one of the best books that I have ever read. It is a masterclass in characterisation. Brilliant.

A hideous masterpiece

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Was unsure due to other reviews criticising the female narrator (and there is no excerpt from ‘Miranda’ on the sample). Took a chance and glad I did- she did an excellent job.

Great Narration, Great Plot

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Part one was utterly excellent, I hated part two because it was basically part one but from a pretentious perspective mixed with a terrible narrator. I must be in the minority, but I really didn’t like Miranda at all. Part two was definitely the weakest part of the book.

Ok

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