Staff Pick
The Outlander is a rare novel. Its beautifully breathless language seduces your attention to the smallest detail. From the first sentence you find yourself running, running with a woman you've just met, for reasons unclear, from pursuers unknown. Yet you don't stop running, nor does she. She runs, in fear and confusion, across fields and up mountainsides, in her mind and through her dubious memory. The frenetic pace carries you through the story and uncovers a world of survival and isolation, brutality, freedom, and love, and introduces you to an extraordinary cast of reprobates, rugged outsiders, and a pair of unusually large, red-headed twins. So incredible is Adamson's description of this journey, I believe The Outlander will be my number one pick for years to come.
Recommended by Ann E., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
In 1903 a mysterious young woman flees alone across the West, one heart-pounding step ahead of the law. At nineteen, Mary Boulton has just become a widow — and her husband's killer. As bloodhounds track her frantic race toward the mountains, she is tormented by mad visions and by the knowledge that her two ruthless brothers-in-law are in pursuit, determined to avenge their younger brother's death. Responding to little more than the primitive fight for life, the widow retreats ever deeper into the wilderness — and into the wilds of her own mind — encountering an unforgettable cast of eccentrics along the way.
With the stunning prose and captivating mood of great works like Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain or early Cormac McCarthy, Gil Adamson's intoxicating debut novel weds a brilliant literary style to the gripping tale of one woman's desperate escape.
Review:
"Set in 1903, Adamson's compelling debut tells the wintry tale of 19-year-old Mary Boulton ('[w]idowed by her own hand') and her frantic odyssey across Idaho and Montana. The details of Boulton's sad past — an unhappy marriage, a dead child, crippling depression — slowly emerge as she reluctantly ventures into the mountains, struggling to put distance between herself and her two vicious brothers-in-law, who track her like prey in retaliation for her killing of their kin. Boulton's journey and ultimate liberation — made all the more captivating by the delirium that runs in the recesses of her mind — speaks to the resilience of the female spirit in the early part of the last century. Lean prose, full-bodied characterization, memorable settings and scenes of hardship all lift this book above the pack. Already established as a writer of poetry (Ashland) and short stories (Help Me, Jacques Cousteau), Adamson also shines as novelist." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Review:
"Gil Adamson's first novel bolts off the opening page: Men with hounds are chasing a young woman through the woods at night. Nineteen-year-old Mary Boulton has murdered her husband and now, still wearing a black mourning dress made from curtains, she's running from her brothers-in-law, massive, red-headed twins with rifles across their backs.
Welcome to 'The Outlander,' an absorbing
... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) adventure from a Canadian poet and short story writer who knows how to keep us enthralled. Of course, the Girl Being Chased is one of the most enduring figures of chivalric and chauvinistic literature, a staple of television dramas and horror films (the dark street, those panicked backward glances, that plaintive cry: 'Oh, why did I wear these heels?!'). But Gil is short for Gillian, and Adamson's strange and complicated heroine has nothing in common with Hollywood's worn-out damsels in distress. For almost 400 pages, we follow 'the widow's peculiar trajectory into the wild. The route like a skittering mouse, light-footed and almost aimless' through the mountains of Alberta, Canada, in 1903. She has no idea where she is or how long she's been running. 'Trained for another life,' a lady's existence of 'sonatas and etudes; the art of a good menu,' she discovers only through trial and error which plants are edible or how sick carrion can make her. 'The widow felt the burden of her own existence,' Adamson writes, 'the endless labour of it.' Yet despite its ceaseless momentum and the relentless fear of capture, this is a strikingly pensive novel, anchored by the stark beauty of its setting and the harsh wisdom of its narrator. Adamson almost always refers to Mary simply as 'the widow,' and she parcels out tiny bits of information about her with tantalizing deliberation. Throughout much of the book, Mary remains a mysterious, almost abstract figure in black. We learn about her mostly during her mental lapses, when the horrors of the past briefly break through her exhaustion and hunger: 'booming in her ears, yes, but also voices, strange and distorted. ... She was like a woman forever woken from a nightmare, afraid to go back to sleep lest it pick up where it left off.' In those dreaded visions, we catch haunting images of Mary's privileged upbringing in the home of a severely depressed ex-minister, her hopeful marriage to a dashing gambler and the ordeal that eventually drove her to murder him — 'the seeds of her despair and madness.' But these are just brief interruptions in a story that remains largely in the present tense, as Mary races against starvation, exposure and those relentless twins, 'their identical faces vigilant and sober (with) the keen, predatory look of hyenas.' The only corny element in this otherwise deadly serious novel, Mary's enormous, implacable brothers-in-law seem to have stomped out of a Cormac McCarthy novel or maybe even one of the Terminator movies. The story catches its breath now and then when Mary runs into people willing to offer her shelter, including a kindly old woman who treats her almost as a guest, an Indian man who saves her from stumbling into battle, and a minister who challenges his parishioners to fistfights every Sunday morning. The most significant of Mary's good Samaritans is William Moreland, who, despite his allegorical last name, was a real person, a legendary woodsman who roamed all over this part of the world. He annoyed U.S. forest rangers for years by living off supplies stolen from their cabins. Adamson works actual newspaper reports into the novel to portray him as a man of almost magical stealth, 'disappearing into the woods like a djinn,' so elusive that spotting him would be 'like seeing a real leprechaun.' Nicknamed the Ridgerunner, Moreland is a fugitive, like Mary, and nothing about her strange manner or ghostly visions strikes him as alarming, but he has an entirely different attitude about the forest. 'Here was a man who suffered no loneliness,' Adamson writes, 'who spent his days as he wished, who believed he could so deeply commune with nature that deer would eat from his hand and allow him to scratch their heads.' He comes upon Mary's emaciated, unconscious body and nurses her back to health. Slowly, with exacting politeness, the widow and the Ridgerunner become friends. They're both hesitant, as easily startled as wild animals, but attraction wins out. Moreland describes their woodland romance with exquisite charm and sweetness, and it seems all the more passionate for that. A lifetime of emotional deprivation has made Mary thirsty for the simple kindness Moreland offers, but living alone for so long has not prepared him for the intensity of his feelings for her. 'Thirteen years alone in the woods, no change except the seasons wagging,' Adamson writes. 'And then there she was on the ground, demented, half-starved. Change came roaring in. Her warm body in his tent like a salacious dream, her beautiful voice, that unnerving gaze.' His impulse to flee, to run from all human contact, 'from life itself,' complicates both their lives in tragic ways. Meanwhile, as those monstrous red-headed twins close in, there are pages here you can't read slowly enough to catch every word. Adamson is as captivating with descriptions of vast mountain ranges as she is with the smaller calamities, like the drowning of a yearling 'frightened into madness.' The spectacular conclusion mingles Mary's fate with a thunderous real-life disaster that took place in Alberta during the early 20th century. Several of the scenes in this novel began as poems Adamson published in a collection called 'Ashland' in 2003, and the sharp intensity of 'The Outlander' suggests its origins in verse. The end of a gripping narrative poem titled 'Mary' describes men still dreaming of a woman who murdered her husband: 'They wake yelping like dogs,/ striking out terrified in the dark/ defending against the quick, descending fury.' The heroine of this novel earns a very different legacy, but her story will unsettle your dreams just the same. Ron Charles is a senior editor of The Washington Post Book World. He can be reached at charlesr(at symbol)washpost.com." Reviewed by Ron Charles, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)Review:
"Adamson's debut work is simply enough, a superb novel....The frayed material of the North American west is rendered in an astoundingly fresh light....[A] condition only occasioned by first rate fiction" Jim Harrison
Review:
"
The Outlander deserves to be read twice, first for the plot and the complex characters, which make this a page-turner of the highest order, and then a second time, slowly, to savor the marvel of Gil Adamson's writing. This novel is a true wonder."
Ann PatchettReview:
"Enriched by vivid language that reflects Adamson's background as a poet,
Outlander is a riveting tale of a woman's thirst for freedom. (Grade:
A-)"
Entertainment WeeklyReview:
"A lovingly crafted novel." Kirkus Reviews
Review:
"Authentic historical details, a strong female character running for her life, and a murder-driven plot will appeal to fiction readers....Highly recommended." Library Journal
Review:
"A remarkable first novel, full of verve, beautifully written, and with all the panache of a great adventure." Michael Ondaatje
Review:
"The slow unfolding of story and character coupled with lyrical descriptions of the terrain, an occasional touch of bizarre humor, and a multitude of well-chosen historical details will appeal to readers of literary writing as well as historical-fiction fans." Booklist
About the Author
Gil Adamson's acclaimed short fiction and poetry have been widely published in magazines and literary journals. Her two poetry books (
Primitive, 1991; and
Ashland, 2003) and her collection of stories,
Help Me, Jacques Cousteau (1995), received rave reviews.
The Outlander is Adamson's first novel.
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