Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Find me "., 13 Jun 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
The Outlander is marketed as an exciting chase novel -strewn across the wilds of Canada- but is actually more a forensic study of a character in the midst of a seismic redemptive arc. It certainly was,nt what i was expecting to read but having got over my initial disappointment quite quickly i actually enjoyed the book for what it was ,even if it is,nt something i would normally absorb myself in.
Mary Boulton is on the run after murdering her husband. The widow,as she is mostly referred to by the narrative , is being pursued by her identical twin brothers in law. As she stumbles away from the determined taciturn pair she encounters characters and situations that will help change her view of the world and gradually unfurl her from the miasma of grief and guilt enveloping her over the death of her infant son .The death of her husband does,nt seem to bother her one jot. Here is a woman whose natural personality has been eroded by the frugality and emotional fascism of her married life.
The Outlander is a well written delve into the psyche of a determined but emotionally fragile women which gives welcome inserts into her back story . Personally i would liked more emphasis on the implacable pursuit by the twin behemoths rather than almost exclusive forays into the mind of the widow. The book lacks dramatic tension for the most part though the last few chapters ratchet that up to a satisfying degree.
This book is not a thriller. Anyone expecting a relentless electrifying adrenaline fuelled ride through the outer edges of civilisation are not going to find what they are looking for with The Outlander . Those who look for an erudite examination round the outer edges of one persons damaged character and how they repair themselves through interaction with other will find plenty to absorb themselves in.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Evocative prose, 19 April 2009
You should read this novel just for the quality of Gil Adamson's prose. She brings a poet's vision to a bleak landscape and creates a wonderfully atmospheric sense of place. Her story is fraught with tension and focuses on the human drive for survival. At times there is a wonderful sense of claustrophobia to the central character's plight that acts as a dramatic counterpoint to the vast vista of the story's setting. The story is skilfully executed and you care about the characters because the author makes them flawed and thus believable. The modern distinction between good and evil, right and wrong blur as human failings come to the fore in a land that has not yet fully entered the modern age. And the ending is...well I'll leave you to find out.
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9 of 11 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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