eleanorfranzen 's review for:

Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson

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This has got to be one of the most famous adventure stories ever written, and I hadn’t read it! Kidnapped feels a good deal darker and older than I was expecting; yes, the premise is that a teenage boy’s dastardly uncle sells him to a ship’s captain who, in turn, plans to sell him into North American slavery, but I thought it would be far more of a romp, with far less genuine peril. In the end, Kidnapped reminded me strongly of two other novels I’ve read relatively recently: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884; my review) and City of Thieves (2008; my review). David Balfour finds, just as Huck Finn does, that his youth will not protect him from the violence and politics of adults. Like Pap Finn, David’s uncle Ebenezer is a greedy, aggressive man who thinks little of imprisoning or causing the death of a child for financial gain. David’s time on board the brig Covenant is marked by danger and cruelty: a cabin boy his age, Ransome, who lacks education and confidence, is so regularly beaten by the captain and mate that the latter actually murders him not long into the voyage. The captain is regretful, but not particularly remorseful, and the boy’s body is discreetly thrown into the sea. When David meets his ally and best friend-to-be, Alan Breck Stewart, they are forced to barricade themselves into the main cabin and defend themselves against the rest of the crew, resulting in several deaths. These haunt David the way that the Grangerford/Shepperson feud haunts Huck; later in the book, he repeatedly wakes in a cold sweat of terror from confused dreams of bloodshed. The timing of Kidnapped's writing and publication makes it entirely possible that Stevenson had read Twain and was, consciously or not, emulating some of his narrative beats. I would love to know if anyone else has remarked the similarity, and if there’s anything written on their mutual literary influence, in either or both directions.

Alan, meanwhile—and the dynamic of his friendship with David—reminded me strongly of Kolya, the older of the main pair in City of Thieves. They share a romantic devil-may-care attitude to life, a vocation to soldiering and spying, and a role as mentor and model of manhood to a younger lad. (Kolya is more explicitly a sexual being; Alan, since he is in a book written for children, is not so obsessed with the lassies, though he approves of one woman who helps them cross the Firth of Forth). They are also both morally grey characters. Alan disclaims responsibility for a murder, but it’s never clear that he’s totally innocent, and he’s quick to anger, arrogant, and overbearing, while also being loyal, brave, resourceful, and tenacious. Kolya shares many of these qualities. I have no idea whether Benioff has read Kidnapped, but it’s hard not to imagine that he was drawing on, at the very least, a common well of characterisation.

A quick note on which to end this meditation: Kidnapped is very largely concerned with the Jacobite movement that sought to replace the English Hanoverian kings (the Georges) with the descendants of James I/VI. If you’re not up on that political phenomenon, I would suggest opening a Wikipedia tab while you read. It’s possible to get by with the information in the text, but it’d help to have background. Source: local public library #LoveYourLibrary