It took some time for me to get into this story. It read like a romance at first - not a normal read for me - and it had a slowness to it that made me lose interest often. But knowing how much I enjoyed Nancy Horan's "Loving Frank" about Frank Lloyd Wright, I knew I had to push myself to keep on with "Under the Wide and Starry Sky" and I'm happy I did.
This story about Robert Louis Stevenson's life really surprised me. Horan's novel was inspired by actual events of Stevenson and his wife, Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne, both prolific writers. Horan scoured diaries, letters, and the written word of many of their family members and friends for a basis to this story. I never knew that RLS was so worldly and open-minded, and even though such a thoughtful writer, so immature while in his twenties.
Coming from a well-to-do family has its opportunities as well as downfalls and RLS often stepped away from his opportunistic life to a calling of his own. Although he had severe health problems, he was open to long travels across oceans, and learning about and living within other cultures. Much of his traveling was for his health, where climate was thought to help his ailments, and they seemed to have done so. His traveling made him well ahead of his time in his view about white man's intent to influence and degenerate traditions, languages, beliefs, etc. He disdained class distinctions and found that the impact of colonization on the native people of the South Seas, terrible.
Whatever I thought I knew about this man (and his interestingly different wife, Fanny) was way off course. If you thought you may have had an idea about what Robert Louis Stevenson was all about, think again. Read this book and you will find quite an interesting Scotsman. The longer I think about this story and let it marinate in my mind, the more it grows on me.
This story about Robert Louis Stevenson's life really surprised me. Horan's novel was inspired by actual events of Stevenson and his wife, Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne, both prolific writers. Horan scoured diaries, letters, and the written word of many of their family members and friends for a basis to this story. I never knew that RLS was so worldly and open-minded, and even though such a thoughtful writer, so immature while in his twenties.
Coming from a well-to-do family has its opportunities as well as downfalls and RLS often stepped away from his opportunistic life to a calling of his own. Although he had severe health problems, he was open to long travels across oceans, and learning about and living within other cultures. Much of his traveling was for his health, where climate was thought to help his ailments, and they seemed to have done so. His traveling made him well ahead of his time in his view about white man's intent to influence and degenerate traditions, languages, beliefs, etc. He disdained class distinctions and found that the impact of colonization on the native people of the South Seas, terrible.
Whatever I thought I knew about this man (and his interestingly different wife, Fanny) was way off course. If you thought you may have had an idea about what Robert Louis Stevenson was all about, think again. Read this book and you will find quite an interesting Scotsman. The longer I think about this story and let it marinate in my mind, the more it grows on me.
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