Outlander (Sassenach)

 - By Diana Gabaldon

Outlander - punched me in the gut, shattered my heart, splintered my spleen, yet it managed to push me to the finish line, overwhelmed with emotions ranging from love to hate. But, at the end of it all, I loved it. I loved the story, I loved the characters, I loved the author's narration. It is a historical romantic page turner, even for non-romantics and that is saying something.

Frank Randall, Jamie Fraser, Claire Randall (Claire Beauchamp), Jonathan Randall, to name a few- are all such intricate characters, who left me staggered, helpless, distraught and passionately in love with most of them. If you read the book, you will know why I could love only few, while I desperately want to strangle a few. And I am quite sure, I am not the only one, wrung with those feelings, having arrived a little late to the Outlander party!

 Diana Gabaldon captured my interest and kept me hooked through an entertaining saga of history and politics, war and violence, passion and masochism, bravery and morality, interlaced with a trickle of time travel. She tells a compelling story with sympathetic protagonists, mainly characterizing a strong female lead who is fortunate to find love in the present time as well as in the past, when she finds herself thrown back by two hundred years and has the presence of mind to handle herself in a war driven Scottish highlands of 1700s.

The story begins with the portrayal of a loving marital relationship between Frank and Claire Randall, exploring Inverness on their second honeymoon post second world war, in 1945. Claire, a retired war time nurse who takes up Botany explores Inverness for specimens of plants and flowers, while Frank, an Oxford history professor explores his genealogy when he finds a scrap of paper indicating that his ancestor had something or other in this region back in the eighteenth or seventeenth century. 

Introduced to the miniature stone henge set in the form of a circle of stones, by a local botanist, Claire is fascinated with the beautiful yet eerie testimonial. As a novice botanist set on exploring the local specimens, she finds herself at the stone henge on Beltane (an ancient Celtic festival). On touching the stone, she hears a vivid screaming that has her stumbling back and falling down, literally through time, into a war driven Scottish highlands of 1743, two hundred years from her now! Ofcourse, she had no idea the instant she opened her eyes that she was in another time, where she wasn't even born! And in that fraction of a second, on that fateful Beltane day, her life changed, from being in a loving relationship with her husband to being thrown back in time and in the day's course of events, finds herself, assaulted, threatened, kidnapped and jostled. From being in the comforts of the nineteenth century, to being thrown back to seventeenth amidst the Jacobite uprising and clan wars, with nothing but her wits and mind, Claire has an uphill task of finding her way back to her time and her husband.

Diana Gabaldon authoritatively portrays the historical time of Jacobite Rising, weaving an intrinsic web with laborious detail, sparingly brushed with humor and liberally laced with passion and pain, bursting with violence and staying appallingly true to the living conditions of 1743.

 Scotland has always been a place of romance for me. Rich in its history and folklore, Scottish heroes have always harbored a romantic notion in my heart. When I read the book, with absolutely no back drop, I did not see the time travel element coming! It starts off rather slowly, but once Claire finds herself in 1743 Scotland, the story progresses rather rapidly. The author managed to capture my attention with the story that made me turn the pages faster than I thought possible, because of the sheer insanity of the story line, of a modern time female, living in a male dominated society, finding herself in situations that are rather mind numbing to me, personally. (WHAT?!?.)

For a wartime nurse, gunshots and mortal wounds are an everyday thing. But, it certainly is something to witness the crime and punishment of the then era. And it certainly is another, to cut and stitch people up without pain killers or disinfectants! I swear, I had goosebumps when I read few passages. But, running underneath it all, is the love she finds in Jamie, an outlawed convict. Torn between infidelity and passion, between reason and reality, she sure had a tough time in the seventeenth century!! Poor Claire!!

Jamie has fast become one of my favorite fictional characters of all the time, with his humility, his presence of mind and untamed passion! Oh Jamie, how my heart aches for you!!! Why, O Why could you just not be a knight in shining armor, with a valiant heart and blue eyes? Why did you have to be a convict running from law? Gah!! His character is one of my favorite in the novel, from being a laird of Lallybroch who had to run away from home and family treading on danger with every step he takes, to finding his soul mate in Claire (his Sassenach (Outlander) as he fondly calls her), he sure is a character portrayed to touch everyone's heart, especially a female's!

Though time travel was what kicks the novel to a jump start, it does not reoccur in this novel, the first in the series of eight novels. Each novel is lengthy, rich in detail and authentic in depiction of the period time. It certainly is not for the faint hearted! But for every zealous reader, who loves a story set in periodic times, for the romantics and non-romantics alike, this is an unadulterated pleasure to read. And for those who have no patience to read the novel, the series is being telecasted as a show on Starz and so far, the TV series stays true to the novel.

I thoroughly enjoyed this historical tale and I hope you do too!!