John Fowles

The Magus

1966. Jonathan Cape. Revised version, 1985.

The park was full of green distances, of countless scattered groups of people, lovers, families, solitaries with dogs, the colours softened by the imperceptible mist of autumn, as simple and pleasing in its way as a Boudin landscape

Nick confronts his elusive lover, in the final scene of the novel, under the suddenly sinister gaze of 'the Regency facade, bestatued, many and elegantly windowed, of Cumberland Terrace'; an echo of the scene where a World War One deserter confronts his girlfriend 'by the gloomy canal that runs through the north of the park'. The two are connected, but the plot is far too complicated to explain how.