Outlander

Alors que Claire Randall effectue sa deuxième lune de miel avec mon mari Franck en Écosse après la Seconde Guerre mondiale, elle se retrouve projetée deux ans dans le passé, au milieu des Highlands sauvages. Son but premier, retrouvé son temps et son mari, mais les épreuves seront rudes. Va-t-elle y arriver ou va-t-elle seulement le vouloir ?

Avant de devenir une fan des romans, car oui, je pense que je lui déjà devenue, je suis une immense fan de la série et quel plaisir ce fut de retrouver des personnages et des lieux si chers à mon cœur par ce nouveau prisme des mots !

J'ai tout simplement adoré, c'est un magnifique pavé de 900 pages et pourtant, j'ai été absorbée du début à la fin et j'ai été très triste en le refermant. Loin d'une répétition avec la série, on a évidemment le droit à beaucoup plus de détails dans le roman et j'en suis ravie !

J'ai pleuré, crié, ris et je pense que c'était le roman parfait pour commencer mon expérience d'annotations ! Calmez-vous les puristes, je n'ai rien écris, juste mis des post-it, mais j'ai beaucoup apprécié cette expérience.

En bref, si vous n'avez toujours pas plongé dans cet univers, papier ou télévisé, qu'attendez vous ? Voilà une belle résolution pour 2024 !

I can't remember when/how this made it on my to-read list but I've owned the audiobook for a while and finally listened to it. It took my a laughably long time listening to realize this was a mashup of sci-fi, historical fiction, and romance.

I found some overlooked details in the history/Sci-Fi distracting, but I mostly found the romantic aspect of the book unsettling, mostly because "women are property" and "consent isn't important" in the time period of this book. Presumably the questionable treatment of sexuality and abuse were for historical accuracy, but it eventually started to feel like it was somehow for the reader's benefit (which felt a bit gross honestly). Reading this from my perspective living in 2021 is unsettling. "No doesn't always mean no" in this book.

I did enjoy aspects of the "20th century person with medical knowledge is suddenly living 200 years ago" plot. I also enjoyed some of the historical discussions (though I'm not well-versed enough in Scottish history to understand some of it).

I'm new to this mashup of genres (especially romance in general), so I don't feel I can rate this book. I can say that I found it both interesting and unsettling and I will not be reading more books from this series.

Let's start by saying trigger warnings for rape and domestic violence. They are contextual to the time period (1743), but if those are a problem for you, don't read this book. Secondly, definite homophobic tones to the book also; and again, while this isn't exactly inappropriate for 1743 Scotland, it was also a choice the author made to apparently equate homosexuality with the more villainous characters, cumulating in a homosexual rape. I found this a problematic choice and it makes me a bit dubious about what direction the rest of the books in the series will take.

Those warnings aside, it IS an interesting story of a post-WWII nurse named Claire who's whisked back in time from 1945 to 1743 Scotland, where she meets fiery-haired James Fraser and is swept into the fighting and intrigue of the Scottish clans, the Jacobites, and the wars against the English, all while trying to survive and get back to her own time if possible. Fortunately for Claire her healing skills give her some personal value and soon enough she's being protected by the Scots and Jamie in particular. There is a lot of interesting interpretation of history and folklore, and also quite a lot of Scottish sex scenes, although for the most part (with a couple exceptions) they're generally pretty tastefully written.

I listened to this as an audiobook and it was a delight to hear the narrator beautifully rendering the Scottish accents. I'm not sure how the accents were written in the text version and it's possible they might have been annoying or difficult to read in print; in audiobook however it worked very well.

Unsure if I will go on to the sequels, I picked this up mainly because it seems to be so highly spoken of, and I did enjoy a lot of it, but the apparent homophobia did leave an unpleasant note.

Super trashy. But very readable.

Historical inaccuracies that should have been easy to avoid, which made me nuts.

1. There wasn't such a thing as "clan tartan" in 1743-1744. That was a Victorian-era invention after tartan had been banned for 100+ years following the failure of the Jacobite Revolution in 1745.
2. Why are all the Highlanders speaking English? They would have spoken Gaelic most of the time.
3. If they're speaking English, they would have known what "fuck" meant, in the contemporary meaning, and would have said it instead of "swive", which is from an earlier period of English.

As others have reported, it's rapey. I don't know if the Jamie-Claire "marital rape" stuff is actually that "rapey" -- it's a "gentle" rape fantasy, which I guess is something that a lot of readers find super sexy. It's a symptom of stunted sexuality in a misogynistic puritanical culture, rather than evil in itself. More than evil, it feels really old-fashioned. It's also vanilla like whoa. All the "great sex" that Claire and Jamie have is almost exclusively P-in-V. Who needs foreplay, anyway? Or another position?

It's also homophobic. The 2 characters with same-sex attraction are rapists -- one is a straight-up evil villain, the other is a jolly fellow who just can't help himself around teen boys and no one's going to stop him. Ugh. Lazy and homophobic.

Also worse -- he fucking beats her, and she shrugs it off like no big deal, and he just shrugs it off too and then he laughs about how his dad used to beat him all the time, and aren't all these beatings just so delightfully funny? With the rape fantasy, it's just that -- a rape fantasy -- "no, you sexy man, no no --oh yesssss". It's stupid, but I get where it comes from given our world and the writer's experience in our world. Whereas the beating is actually presented as something pretty abhorrent, so for it to be laughed off and then forgotten feels gross.

I also can see why this would be really, really vile and abhorrent for some people.

There is also lots of attempted rape. Which apparently has little to no emotional impact on our girl Claire and may actually be a turn-on for her and Jamie. Which makes plenty of sense in a book where Claire can cure Jamie's PTSD and depression and suicidal thoughts after just a few days by.... What exactly? Badly done aversion therapy?

But despite all this, I read the whole thing. She can tell a compelling story, even if it's absurd. Won't need to read the next one though, and won't recommend this to anyone.

I really enjoyed this book. My best friend suggested me reading it but still being busy with another one, I postponed starting it. Netflix apparently knew that I was into this kind of story so it suggested the series which I started watching – without even realising the connection (I had forgotten the name of the book series). After my best friend found out and told me the connection, I immediately started reading and just could not put the book down – something that rarely happens to me except for when I find a really involving story. This was definitely one of them.
There's a lot of horrors in this book and I was shocked how well (but at the same time horrible) explained it is. Despite all the horrible things happening, I loved the book a lot – especially because of it playing in Scotland! The ending is a little mäh, which is why I could not give it all 5 stars. I hope the next book in the series will make me kling to my Kindle just as this one did!
One thing I have to admit that I felt in the middle of the book: you could tell that the author is form the US. I honestly don't remember what passages exactly triggered this, but there was some way of life that didn't seem quite European but more American – some subtle description.

Claire Randall found herself time travelling from 1945 to 1743. She was just back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon but then she walks through an ancient stone circle and finds herself in the midst of a war torn Scotland being raided by the Highland clans. She finds a young Scot warrior and becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire.

Contrary to popular belief, I didn’t read this book along with the Vaginal Fantasy book club; I did it because this is my wife’s favourite series and I needed a romance novel for the Literary Exploration challenge. I’m not really a fan of romances (Wuthering Heights is still the greatest romance of all time) so I wasn’t sure what I was getting into here but be warned, even though I want to talk about all the things that didn’t work for me, it doesn’t mean this wasn’t an enjoyable read.

First of all I want to talk about Claire Randall; here is this strong former combat nurse that finds herself in the past. While she is scared and confused I never felt that her desperation was believable; I felt like the inner turmoil of Claire never really played out and I was left to believe she wanted to be there. Also she is suppose to be portrayed as a strong independent woman but all I saw was a loud mouth nag that put up no fight and just married Jamie with no reluctance at all.

Jamie Fraser suffers from instalove; as soon as he saw Claire he was madly in love with her. Then when they finally got married, the virgin becomes the greatest lover known to man; how is that possible? Also Jamie is supposed to be this great Scottish warrior but all I ever see him do is get into trouble and winding up caught or with severe wounds. Not to mention the abuse towards Claire; sure it was a sign on the time to discipline his wife but this isn’t sexy and is just over done.

Finally the plot; I tend to think this book goes in a repetitive circle, which consists of sex, more sex, conflict, sex, being caught, wife beating and then more sex. This is the entire plot arc and it keeps repeating itself for over 800 pages. Makes me wonder what makes a romance novel, I never felt there was an ounce of romance or love; just lots of sex.

I know this is a series of a great love between Jamie and Claire and there was a flicker of this from Jamie but never felt that come through from Claire. I wonder if sex is a substitute for love here or does this reflect more in the books that follow. Apart from everything I didn’t like about the book, the characters and the writing was pretty good. I wanted more inner conflict from Claire as0 the narrator but that is just a personal preference. I’m always interested in the inner thoughts of a protagonist, especially when they find themselves in an unusual situation.

I’m not sure if I will continue the Outlander series but I would like to think that the romance starts in the next book. I’m curious to know if this is the case; I’m a little hesitant to invest in another 800 pages if it’s just more of the same. Romance novels are not really my thing, but I did like the slight speculative fiction element with the time travel. I hope that aspect of the plot gets explored in greater detail with the other books. Now I’m curious to read The Time Travellers Wife and see how it compares.

This review originally appeared on my blog; literary-exploration.com/2013/03/18/book-review-outlander/