This uncommon first novel by Gil Adamson combines a thrilling adventure story with polished literary technique. is a hallucinatory road novel - or, more accurately, trail novel - written in a chanting prose that's rich with wilderness description, physical adventure and barbed humor.Here's a novel that offers both an intense journey (Mary's) and a portrait of a specific time and place: the Canadian frontier. This is an old-fashioned adventure story - with a dark fairy-tale element. Throughout the novel, Adamson's keen eye for detail and mastery of language are much in evidence in her descriptions of the natural surroundings. The Outlander is also suspenseful to a degree that you are often in a state of physical unrest, a condition only occasioned by first-rate fiction. The frayed material of the North American west is rendered in astonishingly fresh light.
Gil Adamson's The Outlander is, simply enough, a superb novel and one senses in the fine writing the potential, or perhaps the eventuality, of a major writer. The Outlander deserves to be read twice, first for the plot and the complex characters which make this a page-turner of the highest order, and then a second time, slowly, to savor the marvel of Gil Adamson's writing. compelling debut.lean prose, full-bodied characterization, memorable settings and scenes of hardship all lift this book above the pack. It should age well.Īs novels go, The Outlander should qualify for Great Canadian status.Described by author Gil Adamson herself as 'literary gothic western,' The Outlander is perhaps the only book of this genre, but it seems at home among such Canadian classics as Susanna Moodie's Roughing It in the Bush Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace. In the tradition of Guy Vanderhaeghe, this is a dark novel with a long finish. One of those books so gorgeous in the writing that you simultaneously can't wait to read what happens next and want to savour the beauty of the writing.
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