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Loading... The Outlanderby Gil AdamsonLibraryThing recommendationsMember recommendationsLoading...
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. I thoroughly enjoyed this beautiful quiet book. If you are in the mood for a slow story that gently unfolds without a lot of fanfare but, when you read every line, captures you with it's beauty, then this is the book for you. The story is set in 1903 and about a 19 year old woman who is on the run for murdering her husband. ( )It took me a long time to read this book just because I went through a rough patch in July and Aug. I had borrowed the book from the library in the beginning of July and was really enjoying it when my life took a turn for the worse. I just couldn't read any books with out crying or not knowing what I was reading. I finally had to return the book and waited a few months before I borrowed it again. I am glad I waited and didn't try to read it or just gave up on it. I really enjoyed the book. The Outlander is the story of a woman in the early 1900's. The story starts with her running from her brother-in-laws. She goes through all these changes as she is on the run. The woman is Mary Boulton. She is a widow. On her journey she meets many interesting people and really discovers things about herself that she didn't know before. I found myself as I read this book wanting things to work out for her. I was pleased with most of the book except for the end. I felt a little bit was missing. I don't know what it was. I just know I wanted to know what happened with the brother-in-laws, otherwise it was a good book and well worth the time to read. [The Outlander] by Gil Admanson was very good, rating a very high four stars from me. This story of a turn of the century Canada woman who murdered her husband and escaped across the wilderness without resources pursued by her two brothers-in-law is a great first novel. Mary Boulton suffers from psychotic visions but has a strong survival instinct that leads her ever onward. The descriptions of her flight, her starvation and despair are riveting. This is one of the most enjoyable books I've read this year, and will be a candidate for my Book of the Year pick. Gil Adamson's prose has more than a taste of Charles Frasier, and the pleasure I got out of this book was almost on the level of Frasier's Thirteen Moons. Set in the Canadian Rockies in the early part of the 20th century, it tells the complicated story of a desperate young woman who murders her husband to escape an unhappy marriage and is pursued by the victim's brothers. Well told, in lyrical prose, it is hard to believe this is Gil Adamson's first novel. I can't wait to read more. Precis: young tormented woman runs wildly across the mountains of Alberta, after having shot and killed her mean husband. She is pursued by her vengeful brothers-in-law, giant red-headed twins. Along the way, she is aided by a cast of lovable but eccentric roughnecks, including a grizzled backwoodsman, a pugilistic preacher, and a wily dwarf. Uh. . . . I thought the book was "just fair." A valiant first novel, but it was Not Really My Thing. Potentially some good material in the story, but I didn't think it hung together very well. Maybe it would have been better as a novella. I read "The Outlander" because it was the selection of my local book group. A few people in the circle really liked it, mostly for the style and some of the finer prose passages describing the beauties of the Canadian Rockies. Adamson has published two books of poetry, and she can write a fine sentence. . . but novels are made of more than just fine sentences. One member of our group compared the book to Hemingway. I'm not sure about that, but it's true that I never really did care for Hemingway either.
There are plenty of improbabilities in The Outlander, and yet it’s a great read. Adamson is an impressive stylist who knows how to keep an unlikely story moving at a swift and graceful pace.
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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.
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:17 -0400)
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