Ill, Illness

Took a compensatory off from last week's yesterday. Had to take Mira to the Dr. as she seemed to be suffering from a urinary infection. Got the Dr. to advise maid that she should give more water to M. The maid seems to think she is more knowledgeable on these matters and doesnt listen to us. She doesnt clean the baby properly either.
Been feeling a bit drowsy with all the cough medications I have been taking of late.

Reviewing The Collector
Fowles' narrative was absolutely great - first from the perspective of the kidnapper Clegg and then the diary of the kidnapped Miranda and then back to the kidnapper. Fredrick Clegg is a young clerk who lacks social skills. A butterfly collector, he secretly admires a beautiful art student. Clegg buys a house in the remote countryside with the money he wins at the pools. He then kidnaps Miranda and keeps her prisoner underground. He sees to all her needs but rarely lets her out.
Miranda's philosophising in her underground prison is fabulous.
"I am one in a row of specimens... I'm meant to be dead, pinned, always the same, always beautiful... He wants me living-but-dead."
"I could never cure him. Because I am his disease."
"I am older and younger. I am older because I have learnt, I am younger because a lot of me consisted of things older people had taught me. All the mud of their stale ideas on the shoe of me."
"I hate beyond hate."
She compares him to Caliban, the half-beast half-man in Shakespeare's The Tempest.
" The pity Shakespeare feels for his Caliban, I feel (beneath the hate and disgust) for my Caliban. Half-creatures."
"But love is beautiful, any love... The only thing that is ugly is this frozen utter lack-love between Caliban and me."
She yearns for sunlight and life and keeps hoping that he will release her. She even tries to seduce him but it only kills his respect for her. He is also angry with her for exposing his impotency. "Why am I here if he cant do it? As if I'd lit a fire to try and warm us. And all I'd done was to see his real face by it."
She dies of pnuemonia, Clegg decides to court death too until he sees her diary and realises that she never loved him. "He is not human; he is an empty space disguised as a human."
He buries her and the story ends with him speculating about his next catch.
The starkness and utter despair of Miranda's situation coupled with the clinical precision with which the maniac goes about life shakes you. I must read it again to enjoy the beauty of the language and the ideas. Need to see the movie on the book too.
http://www.fowlesbooks.com/novelsof.htm#1