My
History With This Book
As I’ve
written before, I was enamored with Robert Louis Stevenson as a child—around
1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade in primary school.
I had seen the Disney movies of Treasure Island and Kidnapped. I had read children’s abridged versions of Treasure Island,
and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The stories all fascinated me (as they would
any young boy) but at that young age I found the actual unabridged,
unsimplified books quite difficult. I
tried to read the original Treasure Island several times, but gave up.
After
failing to make my way through Treasure Island, I set my sights on Kidnapped next.
I
was already familiar with the story of Kidnapped
because of the Disney movie (W).
(Back in the 1980s, the Disney Channel had a much different format than
it did now, and existed almost solely to re-run old TV shows and movies from
the Disney vaults, so I grew up on those old Disney movies.) The Disney movie had its faults—much like the
book, it started out with a bang, but then completely lost momentum during the
long second half when it just becomes one long journey across Scotland. But I was intrigued enough by the story to
want to check out the original book.
I have to confess I didn’t really enjoy
it. The book was difficult for me and
the entire second half of the book was lacking in action. But this time I was determined to make it to
the end of a Robert Louis Stevenson book, and so I forced myself all the way to
the end.
Aside
from one or two scenes that stuck in my mind, I didn’t really remember any of
the book. The only thing that stuck with
me over the years was a feeling that this book was a struggle.
Why
I Re-Read This Book
In recent
months, I’ve rediscovered Robert Louis Stevenson, and to my pleasant surprise,
discovered that the books I used to find so difficult as a child are now very
easy as an adult. And so I’ve recently
read and enjoyed Treasure Island and Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
I
was now sort of looking for an excuse to re-visit Kidnapped.
But
at the same time, when there are so many classic books I haven’t yet read, it did seem a waste of time to return to books I’ve
already got under my belt.
And
then, while browsing in a second hand bookstore, I stumbled upon a volume that
was entitled Kidnapped and Catriona. Not just Kidnapped,
but Kidnapped and Catriona. It turns out there is a little known, seldom
published, sequel to Kidnapped called
Catriona, and the publishers
(Wordsworth Classics) had printed both books together under the same
binding.
Well,
this was clearly just the excuse I was looking for. I may have read Kidnapped once long ago, but I never read Catriona. So I bought the
volume and proceeded to read through both books.
The
Review: Kidnapped --SPOILERS
An
evaluation of Kidnapped is going to
depend on what you’re looking to get out of a book. If you want a good adventure story, Kidnapped is not nearly as good as Treasure Island.
Or
rather, the last two-thirds of Kidnapped
are not nearly as good as Treasure Island.
The beginning of Kidnapped is
just as exciting, if not more so, than anything in Treasure Island. Kidnapped
really starts off with a bang. The
problem is that the momentum does not carry all the way through.
But
boy oh boy—What a beginning!
For
David Balfour, the main character, the horror of being kidnapped, and on his
way to being sold into slavery in the Carolinas,
is gripping enough. But then the scoundrels
who are running the ship make the drama all the more intense. Even the best of them, Captain Hoseason and
Mr Riach are drunkards and treacherous, but the first mate, Mr. Shaun, is an
absolute psychopath when drunk.
When
Mr. Shaun killed the ship’s boy, Ransome, I found it chilling. (Admittedly as a child I remembered this more
from the movie than from the book, but it’s chilling in both. Children don’t usually get killed in the
Disney movies I was brought up on, and so it shocked me. And the fact that Ransome was an
unsympathetic foul-mouthed child made it all the more chilling. When a sympathetic character dies in fiction,
you at least feel that they redeemed themselves before they died and that at
least their character arc is complete.
When an unsympathetic character like Ransome is murdered, it makes the
murder seem all the more senselessness and brutal.)
And
then, by the standards of 19th century children’s literature, the battle in the
roundhouse is fairly graphic and descriptive stuff. In terms of the blow by blow account, it’s
much more descriptive than any battles described in Treasure Island.
But
all of that is in the beginning. The
problem is the last two-thirds of the book is just a long journey across Scotland, in which
very little exciting actually happens.
However,
as I said above, it really just depends what you want out of a book. If you’re looking for a good adventure book,
the last two-thirds of Kidnapped are
going to disappoint. But Kidnapped was never intended to be
solely an adventure book.
As
the introduction (written by Robert Louis Stevenson’s wife) makes clear, Kidnapped had other purposes.
One
purpose of Kidnapped was to write a
historical novel about Scotland
in the years just after the Jacobite rebellion (W) and in particular
the circumstances surrounding the Appin Murder (W). Robert Louis Stevenson, in preparation for
another play, had apparently been reading the court transcripts of the Appin
Murder Trial, an infamous (at the time) 18th century miscarriage of justice.
The
other purpose is to describe life in the Scottish Highlands during the 18th
century. The main character, David
Balfour, is from Scotland
but grows up a sheltered life in the Lowland countryside. Once he is shipwrecked in the Scottish Highlands,
he had to begin his travels through the Highlands
“as though it were a foreign country,
meeting various adventures and misadventures along the way” (as Mrs. R. L.
Stevenson describes the purpose of the book from her introduction).
Although
it’s often forgotten (at least on my side of the Atlantic),
Robert Louis Stevenson was actually not an English author, but a Scottish
author. (I have a Scottish friend here in Cambodia who is very fond of reminding me about all of Scotland’s
famous sons, so I’ve been reminded numerous times in the past few months of
Robert Louis Stevenson’s real nationality).
And so, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote this as a Scott to describe what
life had been like in Scotland
at the time.
And
so, if you’re looking for a good education about life in Scotland during the 18th century,
this is the book for you. Whatever
faults it may have as an adventure book, it more than makes up for in
educational value.
(While
reading this books, I learned any number of words from the Scottish dialect,
many of which I would try out on my Scottish friend at the bar: muckle, ken, bairn, gang, cannae et
cetera He patiently put up with me
trying to work these words into my conversation, and told me which words I was
using wrong, and which words were still currently in use in Scotland, and which
ones had since gone out of date. I was
also able to make conversation with him about the various history and geography
of Scotland
I learned from this novel.)
Other
Notes
* In recent years, I’ve picked up a lot of British history that I didn’t
know before. Mostly thanks to Monarchy by David Starkey,
and the BBC radio program This Sceptred Isle. I know now more or
less the basics of 17th Century British history—what the Jacobite rebellion
was, who King James was, and who King George was, and who the Tories, and
Whigs, and Covenanters all were.
I
had none of this knowledge as a child, however.
No wonder I had trouble understanding this book back then!
Plus,
add to that all the Scotch dialect in the book!
It’s a wonder I ever finished the book!
In
fact, to be perfectly honest, I’m beginning to question my childhood
memories. Did I really finish this book
back then? It seems like a hard book for
an 8 year old to finish. Everyone knows
how easily childhood memories can get jumbled and misremembered, and I wonder
if I really finished Kidnapped, or if
I gave up on it and later misremembered it as having been finished.
But
this leads me to my next point: Kidnapped
is often still being classified as a children’s book, but it’s not. Possibly in 19th Century Britain, when
the history of the Jacobite rebellion was well known, and everyone was used to
the Victorian-era writing style, it could have been read by children. But I wouldn’t dream of giving this book to a
21st century American child today. If
this book is for anyone nowadays, I think it’s only accessible to adults.
Book
Review: Catriona--SPOILERS
Kidnapped is famous all over the English speaking world, but who has heard of Catriona? It’s completely forgotten these days, isn’t
it?
(Sigh…) The problem with forgotten sequels to classic
books is that often they’re forgotten for a reason. And Catriona
stinks. One of the worst books I’ve ever
read, quite frankly, and I only finished it by forcing myself to finish
it. (One of the results of starting up
this book review project is I’ve gotten a lot better at forcing
myself to finish books I might otherwise have just given up on.)
The
interesting thing about Kidnapped is
that it actually ends with much of the story unfinished—Alan Breck has still
not escaped from Britain,
and the Appin Murder Trial has still not concluded. So it’s clear that the book needed some sort
of a sequel to tie up all of these loose ends.
(Actually, this makes it all the more remarkable that Catriona is completely forgotten these
days, doesn’t it? I mean, Kidnapped is still being widely sold in
bookstores everywhere. Which means a lot
of people must still be reading it these days, coming to the end of it, and
then just walking away with that unsatisfying ending?)
Whereas
Kidnapped at least started out with a
bang even if it had no real action for the last two-thirds, Catriona has no action in it at
all. It’s just a bunch of people sitting
around talking the whole time. For whole
chapters at a time, the plot is not going anywhere.
But
to the extent that there is a plot, it is a romance story.
I
must confess, I have little patience for romance stories at the best of
times. But this one was particularly
bad. It is obvious from the first that
David Balfour and Catriona are in love with each other. So there should have been no problem. But then I guess that wouldn’t have made for
much of a story. So problems keep having
to be invented. First they are separated
from each other by circumstances, but then when they do finally meet, they keep
getting into one fight after another.
The
basic problem, which repeats more times than it should, is that our hero David
Balfour is very bad at expressing his emotions.
And Catriona, our heroine, is very emotionally volatile and flies into a
rage at every misunderstanding between them, and then David has to go to
considerable work to calm her down and assuage her hurt feelings. And then she gets upset about something else,
and the whole cycle repeats itself.
(Perhaps this is a man’s view of how most romantic relationships
work? Maybe this is why men shouldn’t
write romance novels.)
As
in any romance story, the reader is supposed to be rooting for the relationship
to work, and the young couple to finally overcome their difficulties and live
happily ever after. But in my case, I
was actually hoping they wouldn’t get together.
I kept thinking, “If this is how much trouble they’re having during the
honeymoon stage of the relationship, think of the fights they’ll have once they’ve
been married for 30 years. They should
both run away from each other as fast as they can.”
(Actually,
I tell a lie. That’s not completely true—I
was sort of rooting for the lovers to get finally together, if for no other
reason than because I knew the book couldn’t end until they did.)
The
only good thing about Catriona is
that, like Kidnapped, it does mix in
some real historical personages and events, and describe some parts of Scotland fairly
well. And I did, admittedly, find that
part of the book interesting. But the
actual plot itself was terrible.
Other
Notes
* While I was reading this book, I was
discussing Kidnapped with a
co-worker. (He was actually teaching the graded reader version of Kidnapped
to his young learner class.) I told
him I was currently reading the sequel to Kidnapped,
at which point he exclaimed: “There’s a sequel to Kidnapped? How would that
work? It must be like all those Home Alone sequels. ‘Oh
no! I got Kidnapped! Again!””
No,
no, I tried to correct him. The sequel
has nothing to do with Kidnapping. It’s
all about the fall-out from the Appin Murder that happened in the first book,
and the subsequent trial.
He
nodded and accepted my correction.
And
then, once I got a few more chapters into the sequel, I discovered that
actually my friend had been right, and the main character actually does get kidnapped again in Catriona.
Also, speaking of Scotland, here’s something
interesting I discovered recently—There’s a whole version of Wikipedia written
in Scots dialect. For example, here is their article on Releegion:
Releegion - whiles uised interchyngeably wi faith or belief seestem — is for ordinar defined as beliefs adae wi the supernaitural, sacred, or divine; an the moral codes, practices, vailies, institutions an reetuals associate wi sic beliefs. In its braidest sense some fowk haes defined it as the hail tot o answers gien tae expoond humankynd's relationship wi the universe. In the coorse o the oncome o releegion, it haes taen mony forms in sindry culturs an bodies. Antrin times, the wird "releegion" is uised for tae designate whit wad be mair better described as "organized releegion" – that is, an organization o fowk uphaudin the exercise o some releegion, aften takkin the form o a legal entity. There's mony differin releegions in the warld the day.
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