Margin notes from Diana Gabaldon's OUTLANDER

[mme_hardy]

 To begin with, this is Not My Period;  I know nothing at all about 18th-century Scotland.   That means that most historical errors will whiz straight over my head, as will errors in dialect and setting.   These are the things that I did notice, and that annoyed me enough to annotate.  Entries are in  unpunctuated lower case, as I was pecking away tediously on the Kindle app.

"the runcible spoon had not been invented yet ..."

wtf does she think "runcible" means?

"he smashed the quivering trunk [of a cherry tree] several times more, causing a delirious shower of pale-pink petals to rain down upon his head"

a month ago they were picking cherries

"noticing details of my surroundings with a peculiar intensity: the small stained-glass inset over the bar, casting colored shadows over the ruffianly proprietor [innkeeper] and his wares,"

as if 

"a low-necked gown of heavy cream-colored satin, with a separate bodice that buttoned with dozens of tiny cloth-covered buttons, each embroidered with a gold fleur-de-lis.  The neckline and the belled sleeves were heavily ruched with lace, as was the embroidered overskirt of chocolate-brown velvet.   The innkeeper was half-buried in the petticoats he carried, his bristling whiskers barely visible over the foamy layers."

no nonon [Words failed me.]
 

"complete to white asters and yellow roses pinned in my hair"

not in 1745 [Note:  All yellow garden roses descend from rosa foetida and other Mideastern and Asian imports. Although rosa foetida was kept in botanical specimen gardens, 18th-century garden roses are -- duh -- rose-colored, in shades from pale pink to pink to cherry. I am also suspicious of asters blooming in midsummer, as they're a purple fall flower here, but it's a big ol' genus.]
 

[Claire and her Highlander are being married by a priest] "I take thee, Claire, to be my wife ..."  "... to love, honor and protect ..."

should be in Latin you moron

Tansy and eglantine had taken root in the cracks, and waved in precarious yellow flags against the stone

eglantine is a shrubby white rose 

bottles of ale that Jamie had thoughtfully lifted from the well in the inn yard as we left.

doubtful [surely at this period ale would be in casks in the cellar; no innkeeper would be bottling his own and leaving it unattended]

had already found the pile of starched handkerchiefs

?  [the one piece of body linen it's very uncomfortable to starch] 

slowly drew the knife in a semicircle under one breast.  The homespun came free and fell away with a flutter of white chemise, and my breast sprung out

stays [says it all, really]

[18th-century Scot]  "I don't run either, Sassenach," he said gruffly.  "Now, then.  What does 'fucking' mean?"

seriously?

There was one flower in the bouquet, a crushed primrose, whose thorny stem had pricked my thumb.

er, no.

[same Scot, of his older brother] "I thought he was God, or at least Christ."

heresy

argyle socks revealed.

I doubt it.   [socks weren't knitted in fancy patterns at this period, other than stripes and, for formal wear, clocks at the ankles.]

L'Grimoire d'le Comte St. Germain

de + le = du [Furthermore, you don't need to elide "le" in front of a hard consonant].

"Watercress,", he answered, voice slightly muffled by the leavers in his mouth.   He spat them out and applied them to my back. ... "How-how does it taste?" I asked, gulping back the sobs.  "Fair nasty," he replied laconically.

I quite like it myself.

[heroine is in the chapel of a French monastery] "I rose and got the Bible, bringing it back to the prie-dieu with me.   I was hardly the first person to have recourse to the sortes Virgilianae in time of confusion or trouble. ... "and he smote them with emerods, and they were very sore."  No doubt they were, I thought.   What in hell were emerods?  Try Psalms, instead.

English bible?  [WTF is the King James Bible, that emblem of Protestantism, doing in a French Catholic monastery chapel?]

But how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?  It's actually very more-ish, and I keep trying to figure out why.   For me, it's the sensual detail -- even when I'm jarred by details, the sights, scents, and textures are vividly conveyed.   The heroine is sharp-tongued, and not in an adorably feisty way; when she's cross, the people around her know it.   It's fun, mostly, being in her head.   It is actually more fun being in her head during the plot than during the sex scenes, which is saying something.  She's an interesting narrator.

Do I recommend it?  Well...

The final big plot point at the end of the book is the hero being  tortured and raped, both intellectually and physically, at length, by the villain.   This is described by the hero, in detail, together with the emotional and physical effects.   I can't say whether it's "out of place" or not, but it's jarring and difficult to read, even though I don't have any triggers on the subject.   Then, after the hero has confessed all and told the heroine he's so ashamed he wants to die, she brings him out of a feverish terminal decline  by reenacting the whole thing; this triggers him into trying to kill her and breaks his stupor.
There is also a fully-described scene in which the hero beats his wife (the narrator) with a belt for disobeying him in a way that led to her getting captured and having to be rescued. The narrator is angry, but realizes that this has cleared the air.

If you can get past that, and past the historical errors, and if you in general like sprawling novels with the occasional sex scene,  you'll probably have fun.  It is much, much more competently written than such best-selling id novels as Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey.   If you can, check your critical brain at the door.

 

Edit: Comments include discussion of the triggery bit.

Comments

[recessional]

Then, after the hero has confessed all and told the heroine he's so ashamed he wants to die, she brings him out of a feverish terminal decline by reenacting the whole thing; this triggers him into trying to kill her and breaks his stupor.

Here you should picture me like that gif of Colbert opening and closing and putting a hand on front of his mouth, at a loss for words.

[oracne]

I rarely catch stuff like that, so it's vastly entertaining to me, to see others do it!

I read up to book...4, maybe? It got to where I felt she was jumping through hoops to maintain the overall time travel conceit. Or maybe I was just tired of them. They're big books.

[legionseagle]

It is possible (just) that he was wearing "tartan hose". Argyle socks, on the other hand, are right fucking out; they were an advertising gimmick aimed at associating Pringle with the (then) Prince of Wales. Speaking of which, William of Dunbar, a Scots poet, was one of the earliest documented users of the verb "fuck" in written English (Scots).

[rachelmanija]

"the runcible spoon had not been invented yet ..."

wtf does she think "runcible" means?

I think it means that Edward Lear had not yet written "The Owl and the Pussycat." It's an invented word.

[oursin]

Scottish matrimonial law not the same as English - not sure (without more context) about the Cranmer language of the service and presence of a priest. But you could marry in Scotland for a very long time simply by stating the intention before witnesses.

[perennialanna]

Well, I bought a bunch of asters for the sitting room vase three weeks ago and given that I know them as Michaelmas Daisies, I was slightly surprised to find them in July. They were white though (there were also purple ones in the shop).

[staranise]

Idly wondering, when did Fair Isle/colourwork socks come into being? I've always thought argyle was super clever just because of how the diagonals hold the sock together while maximizing the number of threads per square inch; but I don't know the history of the thing.

[tree_and_leaf]

a month ago they were picking cherries

I'm no gardener, but I'm sceptical: I grew up near Edinburgh, i.e. south of wherever the hell they're supposed to be, and the cherry trees very rarely got as far as producing fruit - and if they did, they tended to fall or be eaten by the birds before they were ripe.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

In 1745 nobody was selling ale in bottles, either. Jugs, maybe. Bottles were hand-blown until somebody invented a machine to mass-produce them. (Wikipedia says 1903, and I can't see that there's a political angle, so around then anyway.) Certainly they would never be left out where people could walk off with them-- the hard part was finding something you could charge enough for to justify putting it in a bottle.