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A sixteen-year-old orphan is kidnapped by his villainous uncle, but later escapes and becomes involved in the struggle of the Scottish highlanders against English rule.
thesmellofbooks: Young men in dire straits on the open seas, a background of oppression, and historical richness are a few of the elements these books share. They are both ripping good yarns.
themulhern: I have a theory that each book in the Felix Brooker series is an homage to some work of Robert Louis Stevenson's. This one is clearly an homage to "Kidnapped"; there's the kidnapping, of course, but also the shipwreck, the somewhat mysterious parentage, the nefarious relative, the stalwart and canny friend.… (meer)
Overall impressions: Good. The classic Scots terminology can take some getting used to. An eBook with a dictionary would be helpful.
Not what I was expecting. I just assumed a pirate novel because I associate Robert Louis Stevenson with Treasure Island, which is a very silly thing to assume.
Recommendation: For those that read classic fiction, yes. If you are interested in dipping your toes in classic fiction, it is a very good entry point. Not too long, but definitely has a more classic writing style. If you are not very interested in classic fiction or don't like fiction in general, no. I don't think anything in this book would change your mind about either if you are not already inclined to be interested.
Basic plot: A young man, David, inherits a large estate. His miserly uncle, in an attempt to prevent David from getting the estate, sells him into slavery via kidnapping. The ship taking him to South Carolina runs into a crushes a small boat. One of the passengers, Alan Breck Stewart, escapes death and is picked up by the ship.
The captain and crew decide to kill the passenger and rob him. David, overhearing that, warns the passenger and the two of them fight the crew to a standstill. Due to mistrust, the crew can't do their job properly and the ship runs aground in western Scotland.
While following Alan's trail, David ends up on the scene of a famous murder in Scottish history. At the scene he rejoins with Alan, who partook in the Jacobite Rebellion and is anti-English, and the two then engage in a flight across Scotland to escape the authorities and to reclaim David's inheritance.
The novel cover's historical Scottish events. The difference between highland and lowland Scots. It also features small ale, which was a term for the very low ABV beers that people drank instead of water. As a brewer, I found that amusing. There's a lot of historical stuff in there. Robert Louis Stevenson was writing from the 1800s and seems to have been big on research.
The story takes a while to get going. It's almost half-way through (at least in chapters) before the plot really kicks off. The meeting the uncle, the ship travels, and the initial wandering through western Scotland are all building up to the murder and flight. It's introduction and background.
Those parts aren't unrelated to the plot, but it does seem like a lot of buildup. It shows a lot of Alan and David as people so you can believe that Alan isn't responsible for the murder. The court case convicted him, but history has decided that he probably wasn't guilty.
Details I really liked: The struggle for food felt very real. This is something missing from many modern novels. Pre-refrigeration and weaker farming tech makes a big difference in food availability, storage, and transport. Food is difficult and is very frequently bland because you got cold oatmeal because that is what is available and can be made while in hiding.
When David kills someone for the first time while helping defend Alan from the treacherous crew, it caused him a lot of mental anguish that, again, feels very real in a way that, again, many modern novels don't capture. Either the guilt of killing of glossed over or it is overwrought.
The novel deals with multiple languages well. Many of the highland Scots do not speak English or they speak very little. David only speaks English. That inability to communicate is shown very well through David's wanderings alone in the highlands. Alan being a translator is a valuable asset. Also, highlanders getting offends at David's lack of Gaelic is very realistic.
Characters: None of them really stuck out to me. All the characters play their roles. Only the main characters, David and Alan, get that much screen time or depth. David mentions some positive sides of the crew in passing. Riach in particular is shown to have a good side, but has little compunction against killing Alan for his money. The uncle Ebenezer has a bit more in his backstory to give him some complexity over a simple greedy miser.
David and Alan showing loyalty and friendship to each other is the key theme of the story. Starting from David warning Alan of the crew's plans and helping him against their assault. Throughout the story, both have opportunities to abandon the other. And, in those times, would be better served by abandoning each other. Even when they come into conflict with each other and their differences in ethnicity, national loyalty, religion, and temperaments stoke that conflict, their shared debts and trials keep them together.
A letter which surfaced only after his father's death sends David Balfour off to Edinburgh, where he meets his elderly uncle Ebenezer. Though rather unpleasant, Ebenezer appears to welcome David, only to turn around and arrange for his kidnapping aboard a ship bound for America. When the vessel founders during a storm, David lies stranded on a small, rocky island in the Hebrides, alone and unsure how he'll ever make his way back home.
I'm confident that at the time of its publication, this would have been an exciting book to get one's hands on. Today, though? It's just OK, but perhaps a bit too dull to compete with contemporary adventure novels. The most interesting aspect to me was following David's journey on a map as I read, curious about the terrain traversed and towns passed through. It might be helpful to have some basic familiarity with the '45 to understand the political factions and motivations for some characters' behavior. Worth a read if you're working your way through a list of "classics." ( )
I really enjoyed becoming acquainted with the Scottish dialect in this book, lots of fun with an unfamiliar branch of English. I was helped by the glosses in the Project Gutenberg version, and the dictionary built into my e-reader had definitions of a surprising percentage of the words. The story itself was not too intriguing, a fairly pedestrian (well, they WERE on foot the whole way) adventure tale but it kept my interest throughout. ( )
I read the 1958 Pocket Library edition of this book and was very disappointed. I did like how Stevenson portrayed David Balfour, even though his altruism was unrealistic. I did not like all the fighting, killing, and gruesome scenes, and do not feel children need to be exposed to all of that at young ages. I also did not understand most of the book because of the Scottish language and slang, but I was able to get the basics of the story. ( )
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
MY DEAR CHARLES BAXTER:
If you ever read this tale, you will likely ask yourself more questions than I should care to answer: as for instance how the Appin murder has come to fall in the year 1751, how the Torran rocks have crept so near to Earraid, or why the printed trial is silent as to all that touches David Balfour. These are nuts beyond my ability to crack. But if you tried me on the point of Alan's guilt or innocence, I think I could defend the reading of the text. To this day you will find the tradition of Appin clear in Alan's favour. If you inquire, you may even hear that the descendants of "the other man" who fired the shot are in the country to this day. But that other man's name, inquire as you please, you shall not hear; for the Highlander values a secret for itself and for the congenial exercise of keeping it I might go on for long to justify one point and own another indefensible; it is more honest to confess at once how little I am touched by the desire of accuracy. This is no furniture for the scholar's library, but a book for the winter evening school-room when the tasks are over and the hour for bed draws near; and honest Alan, who was a grim old fire-eater in his day has in this new avatar no more desperate purpose than to steal some young gentleman's attention from his Ovid, carry him awhile into the Highlands and the last century, and pack him to bed with some engaging images to mingle with his dreams.
As for you, my dear Charles, I do not even ask you to like this tale. But perhaps when he is older, your son will; he may then be pleased to find his father's name on the fly-leaf; and in the meanwhile it pleases me to set it there, in memory of many days that were happy and some (now perhaps as pleasant to remember) that were sad. If it is strange for me to look back from a distance both in time and space on these bygone adventures of our youth, it must be stranger for you who tread the same streets--who may to-morrow open the door of the old Speculative, where we begin to rank with Scott and Robert Emmet and the beloved and inglorious Macbean--or may pass the corner of the close where that great society, the L. J. R., held its meetings and drank its beer, sitting in the seats of Burns and his companions. I think I see you, moving there by plain daylight, beholding with your natural eyes those places that have now become for your companion a part of the scenery of dreams. How, in the intervals of present business, the past must echo in your memory! Let it not echo often without some kind thoughts of your friend,
R.L.S. SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH.
Eerste woorden
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
I will begin the story of my adventures with a certain morning early in the month of June, the year of grace 1751, when I took the key for the last time out of the door of my father's house.
Citaten
Laatste woorden
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
The hand of Providence brought me in my drifting to the very doors of the British Linen Company's bank.
In the fear of which, and lest any one should complain of scurvy usage, he hastens to protest that all went well with both, in the limited and human sense of the word "well"' that whatever befell them, it was not dishonor, and whatever failed them, they were not found wanting to themselves.
A sixteen-year-old orphan is kidnapped by his villainous uncle, but later escapes and becomes involved in the struggle of the Scottish highlanders against English rule.
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Overall impressions:
Good. The classic Scots terminology can take some getting used to. An eBook with a dictionary would be helpful.
Not what I was expecting. I just assumed a pirate novel because I associate Robert Louis Stevenson with Treasure Island, which is a very silly thing to assume.
Recommendation:
For those that read classic fiction, yes.
If you are interested in dipping your toes in classic fiction, it is a very good entry point. Not too long, but definitely has a more classic writing style.
If you are not very interested in classic fiction or don't like fiction in general, no. I don't think anything in this book would change your mind about either if you are not already inclined to be interested.
Basic plot:
A young man, David, inherits a large estate. His miserly uncle, in an attempt to prevent David from getting the estate, sells him into slavery via kidnapping. The ship taking him to South Carolina runs into a crushes a small boat. One of the passengers, Alan Breck Stewart, escapes death and is picked up by the ship.
The captain and crew decide to kill the passenger and rob him. David, overhearing that, warns the passenger and the two of them fight the crew to a standstill. Due to mistrust, the crew can't do their job properly and the ship runs aground in western Scotland.
While following Alan's trail, David ends up on the scene of a famous murder in Scottish history. At the scene he rejoins with Alan, who partook in the Jacobite Rebellion and is anti-English, and the two then engage in a flight across Scotland to escape the authorities and to reclaim David's inheritance.
The novel cover's historical Scottish events. The difference between highland and lowland Scots. It also features small ale, which was a term for the very low ABV beers that people drank instead of water. As a brewer, I found that amusing. There's a lot of historical stuff in there. Robert Louis Stevenson was writing from the 1800s and seems to have been big on research.
The story takes a while to get going. It's almost half-way through (at least in chapters) before the plot really kicks off. The meeting the uncle, the ship travels, and the initial wandering through western Scotland are all building up to the murder and flight. It's introduction and background.
Those parts aren't unrelated to the plot, but it does seem like a lot of buildup. It shows a lot of Alan and David as people so you can believe that Alan isn't responsible for the murder. The court case convicted him, but history has decided that he probably wasn't guilty.
Details I really liked:
The struggle for food felt very real. This is something missing from many modern novels. Pre-refrigeration and weaker farming tech makes a big difference in food availability, storage, and transport. Food is difficult and is very frequently bland because you got cold oatmeal because that is what is available and can be made while in hiding.
When David kills someone for the first time while helping defend Alan from the treacherous crew, it caused him a lot of mental anguish that, again, feels very real in a way that, again, many modern novels don't capture. Either the guilt of killing of glossed over or it is overwrought.
The novel deals with multiple languages well. Many of the highland Scots do not speak English or they speak very little. David only speaks English. That inability to communicate is shown very well through David's wanderings alone in the highlands. Alan being a translator is a valuable asset. Also, highlanders getting offends at David's lack of Gaelic is very realistic.
Characters:
None of them really stuck out to me. All the characters play their roles. Only the main characters, David and Alan, get that much screen time or depth. David mentions some positive sides of the crew in passing. Riach in particular is shown to have a good side, but has little compunction against killing Alan for his money. The uncle Ebenezer has a bit more in his backstory to give him some complexity over a simple greedy miser.
David and Alan showing loyalty and friendship to each other is the key theme of the story. Starting from David warning Alan of the crew's plans and helping him against their assault. Throughout the story, both have opportunities to abandon the other. And, in those times, would be better served by abandoning each other. Even when they come into conflict with each other and their differences in ethnicity, national loyalty, religion, and temperaments stoke that conflict, their shared debts and trials keep them together.