Outlander

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Average customer rating 4.9 (10 comments)

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This is an amazing and amazingly dark novel, about a woman who saves herself. Reading this novel, I realized that I am able to predict the plot twists and turns of most books that I read, and yet this one had me at the edge of my seat and I had no idea what would happen next. The main character is so well-drawn and interesting you will want to follow her adventures until the last page and beyond.

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This is the book I recommended most to friends this year. I loved how the story, past and present, unfolded and practically speed-read the book to see what happened.

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Quietly engaging; writing is haunting. Love, love, loved it.

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From the beginning I was captivated by this tale of a smart, brave woman escaping a life of dominance. The feeling of fear was so convincingly written that I found myself literaly shaking. I have passed this book on to friends who had the same experience of terror and jubilation that I felt.

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This is one of the most compelling books I've read in a long time. I loved how the past was intertwined with the present to slowly reveal the motivation behind Mary's actions. The reviewers weren't kidding when they said you would want to read this book twice. At the end, I sighed in complete contentment with the story, yet was ready to read it again immediately to more completely appreciate the prose.

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The Outlander is an outstanding novel and a superb read.

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a book to be shared well into the night, for as long as it takes to come out of the wilderness and then find your way back in again.

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It reads like poetry in prose. Beautiful, thoughtful, and engaging. Transporting, mysterious and cold.

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Overall, I enjoyed this novel about a young woman on the run in the Canadian wilderness, ca. 1903. Never quite fitting into the accepted role for women of her day, the heroine, Mary Boulton, comes into her own, finding strengths and desires that she never knew she had as she flees from the avenging brothers of the husband she murdered. Along the way, she meets a series of fascinating characters. The Outlander is not quite a western and certainly not a murder mystery; it's more of a wilderness adventure and the story of a woman discovering herself. Adamson, also a poet, has the ability to put us inside her heroine's mind, and her descriptions are vivid and highly sensory. My only quibble is that I wish she hadn't continued to call Mary "the widow" throughout the entire novel. We get the irony; if you give your character a name, use it! (Especially when "the widow" is not how Mary would identify herself, nor does anyone else label her "the widow" once she changes from her mourning weeds, which happens early in the novel.)

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In 1903, nineteen years old Mary Boulton calmly grabs her husband's rifle and fires killing him. The widow knows she cannot hang around not because she fears the law, but her abusive brother in laws would enact vengeance in their vicious style. Mary flees across wintry isolated Idaho and Montana while knowing in her composed gut they pursue her. On her trek, she reflects on her unhappy but thankfully short marriage exacerbated by the dead child. As her deep depression enables her to remain eerily unruffled, she meets people along the way. First there is the Frontiersman who admits creeping civilization makes him depressingly feel like an anachronism; then there is the Reverend who treats her like an adored daughter. There are others some not as kind towards the itinerant female especially after a mining disaster that the locals feel she caused by being there. However, the worst is coming as the brothers are nearing and the Reverend wants to change their relationship to that of more of equal partners. An allegory of a way of life that seems all but vanished, THE OUTLANDER is an excellent historical thriller starring a strong support cast, a spirited lead female, and a vivid picturesque setting. Readers anticipate High Noon is coming, but it is the trip to the final showdown that makes for a deep look at early twentieth century America in a remote part of the northwest.