/lit/ - Literature

>what the fuck made it such a 'masterpiece' as people claim it to be

I think this is the problem. You hadn't read a book for years and you were expecting some sort of life changing experience. In other words your expectations were too high.

The merits of the book are that it is entertaining and compelling with psychological elements thrown in along with a detective novel twist too. It's a great book I feel sorry that you didn't like it op. Better luck next time.

>>1773950

>>1738742
When he cuts himself out of the The French Lieutenant's Woman it isn't to be a gimmicky man, or to snark premeditated; it happens when something draws him out of that trance, that act of trying to create the characters and see what they'd do in his understanding of the Victorian Lyme Regis. In the writing of that story, and later in A Maggot, these books drew themselves out of singular images, dream scenes in his mind's eye that come unbidden, and are thought out with little pre-structure. (Daniel Martin seems a bit more deliberate, but then that isn't something I'm going to go into here.)

I can't really speak for the metafictional merit of The French Lieutenant's Woman in contrast to maybe At Swim-Two-Birds (haven't read it) but I am sure that it brought the idea of this kind of movement in a book to a wider audience than O'Brien did.

Thanks again for the podium Caracalla.

>>1738712
>WITHOUT [...] ACTUALLY SCRATCHING PAST THE SURFACE OF DEPTH

Forgive the light-hearted gibe caps but this seems a bit hypocritical coming from you.

>>1716406
>the first Hitchhiker book
>from the bestselling author of Mostly Harmless