The Ebony Tower by John Fowles (PDF)

Description

The Ebony Tower, comprising a novella, three stories, and a translation of a medieval French tale, echoes themes from John Fowles’s internationally celebrated novels as it probes the fitful relations between love and hate, pleasure and pain, fantasy and reality.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐If you loved The french Lieutenant’s Woman and The Magus, you should definitely check out these stories. All are excellent, and the title story is a sublime reworking of favorite Fowles themes: freedom, hazard, the redemptive power of love, albeit in a more wistful –if not tragic –mode.

⭐John Fowles is the Magus of modern literature. A sorceror who conjurs us away from our everyday existence with masterful descriptive narrative and uncommon depth of thought and ideas; a wise man bearing gifts to the world of average writing. Fowles is at his peak with The Ebony Tower. The best fiction ever written. I was lucky to find this first edition printing in fine shape with jacket intact through Amazon.

⭐His style is very good, talking about unusual situations with a little sarcasm and interesting point of view. Sometimes a little boring, but others, exciting.

⭐It was well written but not to m y taste unfortunately. It was about a writer who interviews an reclusive older writer.

⭐John Fowles is definitely the best writer of our times, and this book is well worth reading, if only for his inclusion of the Marie de France short story.

⭐A novella and short stories, first published 1974. Some memorable, exquisite writing though it feels dated in parts.The Ebony Tower novellaWithin an old Brittainy forest dwells the English painter Henry Breasley: accomplished but reclusive; belligerent and misogynistic; old and infirm but still creative; formed during the modernist era, now disgusted by abstract art. David Williams, an abstract painter and modestly successful art critic, stays two days, leaving behind wife and kids, to interview the great man. Then there are two live-in carers, young female artists, hungry for deep male minds and ready to swim naked at Breasley’s behest. Sophisticated talk ensues.Spoiler alertDavid has his midlife crisis, as one of the women and he fall in love; his life has been empty till now. Their new love is too deep for a secret furtive fling; for David it is either a whole new life or betrayal of this newfound self. His wife and children seem to be zeros to him, he resists temptation only due to a sense of propriety. But then he melts and goes for the girl – just as she’s got cold feet, so he ends up failing both propriety and his true inner self.The forest, soaked in romance, is the subject of Breasley’s current paintings and frames David’s dilemma in terms of medieval, hands-off courtly love.EliducFowles explains that The Ebony Tower is sourced from a medieval romance, itself adapted from much older material. Here it is, rewritten by him. Feudal honor replaces bourgeois propriety as the constraint on adulterous love. Unfortunately it feels like the original story’s ending is lost, buried under crude feudal-Christian messaging.Poor KokoA dry, intriguing story of a home break in, where an aging writer deals with a smart, semi- and self-educated young thief. It is a contemplation of this latter sort of man, with a huge chip on his shoulder.The enigmaAnother dry intriguing tale, where a police sergeant investigates the disappearance of a Tory MP. A meticulous inquiry is meticulously described. The MP’s impeccable life eliminates the usual conjectures, then itself becomes the key clue – along with the fact that those closest to him seem more interested in their own lives than in solving the mystery. (Spoiler) It is a return to the first story’s theme of middle class deadness versus the life to be found from slim young female beauties.The cloudA further exploration of social deadness among middle class sophisticates, this time more dense and sad.

⭐A collection of five short stories- a visit to an aging artist; a retelling of a Celtic love story; a burglary ; the mysterious disappearance of an MP and a picnic in the French countryside are all used to explore societies values; the friction of the old and new and the burden they all impose and the constant pressure to conform to either radicalism or conservatism or a mixture of both. This book is easily dated to the decade it was written-the 1970’s-as Fowles uses all the pretentious rhetoric of the chattering classes of the day of rejecting wholesale the long established values and wanting to replace them with some vague ideological fantasy. The stories aren’t light, easy fireside reading. ‘Eliduc’ (the Celtic tale) ‘Poor KoKo’ and ‘The Enigma’ are accessible and well rounded, whereas ‘The Ebony Tower’ and ‘The Cloud’ are very much of the 70’s that has been rejected strongly nowadays-the casual sex of an old man on young girls; the sex of the permissive society. That Fowles suggests the shallowness of this doesn’t take away the images of an embarrassingly pretentious era. A book you will like and loathe at given intervals.

⭐This book is actually a collection of five stories, but the title story is the most powerful. In this story a confident, married young artist David arrives on an isolated island where an artist Beasley and two “nymphs” live along with a housekeeper and man. David is pulled into the life of Breasley, who seems to live a full, carousing, self-indulgent life, but paints powerful and beautiful paintings prolificly.David , confused and fascinated at first begins to see his life for what it is, mediocre and shiftless.Fowles writing is intense and excellent, subtle and definitive. The two characters of David and Breasley are strong and opposite.

⭐The novella has been quite popular recently. With large lettering coveRing little over half of pages printed on thick paper, they can feel quite substantial on a bookshop’s table. With a famous author they can appeal to Booker judges as well adding weight to flimsy stories which didn’t really deserve such acclaim. The Ebony Tower is substantial for other reasons. It is a fully realised story with enough ideas for countless books. You get for great short stories as well. This is a fantastic collection.

⭐Great book, great seller. Book as described. No problems. I would be very happy to purchase from seller again.

⭐Great book, thanks!

⭐Qyite difficult to get through but worth it I think.

⭐Five short stories by John Fowles, none particularly short, and a book he had once thought to call ‘variations’ because the stories offer variations of the themes of his other work.I found the first and longest story, The Ebony Tower, arresting and involving. It’s about what really makes us tick – and in this case a young artist visits a much older artist living in France and learns something about the selfishness he may need to feel (and may in fact lack) if he wishes to become great at his art. Place and character are vividly conveyed as is the nature of the moral dilemmas the young man faces (compare and contrast The Magus) and the resolution is satisfying.For me after that the book went downhill. There follows Eliduc, apparently a translation of one of the lays of Marie de France (at least that’s what Fowles says it is and I’m in no position to comment). This had, I thought, only some historical interest although it’s possible to see how the themes too are characteristic – but they are conveyed only in outline. Then we move on to Koko, a short novel about a house break-in and The Enigma, a short story about the disappearance of an MP (an ultimately inexplicable event, on which there are many theories and narratives – compare and contrast the later novel A Maggot). And finally, a story, The Cloud, which I failed to follow other than at the level of basic narrative. Fowles’ gifts are in play throughout the work, but I felt at the end of the book that the short story is not a medium that really does justice to his themes. In the novels, there is scope for much greater narrative drive and much deeper exploration of people, what we know and what we don’t know, and of what makes us tick

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