Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Tenderness of Widows, 16 April 2009
Gil Adamson's "The Outlander" is an evocative, gripping story of flight and pursuit, loneliness and love, set in the Canadian Rockies at the close of the Victorian era. The novel has many similarities to - and is just as good as - the winner of last year's Costa prize for Best Novel, Stef Penney's "The Tenderness of Wolves."
Adamson is a seventh-generation Canadian. She has previously published poetry and short stories. "The Outlander" - which was ten years in the writing - is her first novel. It builds on the themes of flight and alienation of her verse. Some of the characters and events draw on her family history. These she complements with in depth research and a vividly gothic imagination.
The book begins with a thunderclap:
"It was night, and dogs came through the trees, unleashed and howling. They burst from the cover of the woods and their shadows swam across a moonlit field. For a moment, it was as if her scent had torn like a cobweb and blown on the wind, shreds of it here and there, useless. The dogs faltered and broke apart, yearning. Walking now, stiff-legged, they ploughed the grass with their heavy snouts."
The story proceeds with relentless momentum, layering detail of landscape and climate, torquing up the psychological tension. We are immediately introduced to "the widow," a nineteen year-old fugitive, hallucinatory from hunger, post partum trauma, bereavement and shock - not guilt - at her own crime. We quickly learn that she has been "widowed by her own hand." Now, she is under pursuit from her late husband's giant, twin brothers aided by a professional tracker. She is not at home in the forest - "she has been trained for another life" - and even though surrounded by edible plants is unable to tell which she can and cannot eat.
Adamson's imagination is powerfully visual. We see in our mind's eye the widow`s progress through a pageant of set pieces: the ferry crossing, the encounter with wayward children, the church service, the hospitality of a self reliant old woman, the runaway horse, the woodsman, the Indians, the miners, the pugilist preacher, the horse thieves, the catastrophic landslide in the mining community of Frank, which in real life killed 76 people. These tableaux and characters are familiar to us from nineteenth century photographs and cinematic representations of the Old West. This is not a weakness. It adds to the phantasmagoric nature of the widow's journey and focuses the psychological spotlight intensely on her.
Adamson refers to her protagonist as "the widow" rather by her name, Mary Boulton. This keeps her at a distance. Mary's character is developed not through providing access to her inner thoughts but by placing her in scenes in the novel's present tense and flashbacks and leaving readers to form their own views. The motive behind her crime is never explained. A modern feminist perspective might judge that breaking away from serial subjugation by a depressive father and an abusive husband is justification enough. Indeed, as Mary becomes more self-assured and self-assertive she develops a distinctly twenty-first century sensibility. In this landscape where everyone is a newcomer or a stranger of sorts, Mary is an outlander in time rather than geography.
If I have a quibble with the book, it is that its timeline becomes quite confused. Working backward from biological clues, Mary must have been in Frank for two or three months. This seems short relative to all that goes on there ,but an inexplicably long time for her pursuers to be tracking her trail to the camp. Also, I was unduly disturbed by the reference to a golf ball in an early chapter. True the Royal Montreal Golf Club opened its gates in 1873, but I cannot believe that any of the characters in this book would have had the slightest exposure to the frustrating game. These are minor issues, however. The book is well researched and convincing.
"The Outlander " ends not with a conclusion but with a tease - a tease on the part of Mary of another character, and a tease on the part of Adamson of her readers. I found myself wondering what happened next well after I turned the final page.
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10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Highly Recommended, 19 Feb 2009
I can't believe this is a first novel - assured, both in plot & style, it swept me along in the classic un-put-downable manner. It is beautifully written - highly evocative of both the time & the place, and peopled with flawed yet believable and compelling characters.
It captures all the rawness of the pioneering life and the indomitability of that unforgiving environment. And Mary Boulton's personal story, her feisty spirit, her relationships, her trials and ultimate redemption, is not easily forgotten. I can't recommend it highly enough - enjoy.
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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
mythic tale, 2 Mar 2009
This is a powerful piece of writing with a strong narrative structure and some absolutely beautiful prose. It is cast very much in the classic Western mythic mode so that the lead character is typically The Widow and her pursuers are treated almost as generic types rather than complex individuals. This approach does dignify the tale but it also leads to a certain neglect of any introspective exploration of the main characters (except the Widow). As a fiction exploring the margins of human communities it is analogous to but not as successful as Stef Penney's recent book. On the other hand the gradual unfolding of the history that has led to the present events interweaving with those events is persuasively done and it amounts to a thrilling and emotionally powerful work. I had a slight feeling it had been written for subsequent translation to the screen and I am sure it will make the basis for a very fine film and this is perhaps where it misses the top notch as a novel but I enjoyed reading it a lot and will recommend it to friends and more generally.
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