A GOOD READ

Have just finished reading The Outlander, by Gil Adamson. Again, found this just by chance in a charity shop, hadn't heard of it before, but the recommendation on the cover by Michael Ondaatje (one of my favourite authors) was enough to tempt me. I immediately liked the preface of a solitary outsider, a young woman not fitting into conventions and social mores of the time and being so different that she is considered 'weird'. The first 100 pages or so were a little turgid at first, but then the narrative suddenly got into its stride and I had a sense of where it was going - then I couldn't stop reading it. Devoured the book in a matter of days. The style is beautifully rich, experimental, brave and detailed, and the pace of the narrative fairly carries you along. The girl begins by being a real victim, typically trapped by the limitations of being a girl, victimized, terrorized, bereft, abandoned, invisible to her parents, to her grieving father and berating grandmother, so she obediently gets married in the hope this will sort out her future. She then has to learn how to survive in a remote log cabin in the wilderness. When she ends up murdering her husband, she is then pursued through the mountain passes in harsh winter conditions by her implacable brothers-in-law, who silently hunt her down. She survives, finds friends along the way, and manages to evade capture ... or does she?

It's a very good read, and I would certainly recommend it.