Reviews with content warning for Slavery - Kidnapped

There may be advantages to my reading this book at the age of 50 without remembering it, having first encountered it as a teen. My attention was attracted by other qualities than its adventure narrative (which it has in sufficiency). It is presented as being written by David Balfour when he is at least as old as I am, and he is analytic about his 17-year-old self as he records the occasions when he was foolish or conceited, as well as the occasions when he did something he still thinks is genuinely fine. This is one of the things that I find most attractive about it this book, the "unheroic" nature of its main character and the two levels of experience presented simultaneously, raw experience and hindsight. I sure don't have much common cultural ground with Scottish Calvinists, but their emphasis on honest self-examination doesn't go amiss, especially blended with the humane attitude toward other people that David Balfour possesses. After all, this is also a portrait of a young man discovering the world beyond his narrow upbringing; the people are as much of a shock to him as the hardships and dangers he is subjected to. Thirdly, it's a depiction of a dark period in Scottish history, the destruction of the Highland clans and their way of life. No wonder Balfour's feelings are ambiguous--he knows that he can't get a proper feeling for Highland culture under the circumstances, but what he does pick up makes him aware of just how different people can be even within one "country," and that perhaps the good is not only on one side. It's a clever choice by Stevenson, who was obviously well read in history, to never use a voice of objective authority, but constantly have Balfour say just, this is what I saw, colored as it was by my strong emotions and my naivete.

It's just too bad that Stevenson couldn't satisfactorily conclude this novel, after breaking it off abruptly. The ending he finally produced, seven years later, in the form of Catriona, does pick up on some of the interesting political and personal themes, but in an overly diffuse manner, and diluted by considerable tedious irrelevancies too. If I was a writer, I would just boil down Catriona into an 8-page epilogue!

By the way, the edition I chose was the audiobook narrated by Kieron Elliott, who does a very creditable job: expressive but almost never exaggerated. Why on earth is he one of only two I could find, out of so many alternative audiobooks, who reads this novel with a Scottish accent? After all, Balfour says at one point that although he is trying to write in English rather than Scots, he fears he will make errors in grammar because of his unfamiliarity with the idiom; sure enough, in the very next paragraph he uses a Scots turn of grammar...

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