Mini ARC Review: Under the Wide and Starry Sky

Author: Nancy Horan
Series: Standalone
Publisher: Ballantine Books (Random House)
Release: Jan 21st 2014
Source: NetGalley
Pages: 496 (ebook)
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At the age of thirty-five, Fanny van de Grift Osbourne leaves her philandering husband in San Francisco and sets sail for Belgium to study art, with her three children and a nanny in tow. Not long after her arrival, however, tragedy strikes, and Fanny and her brood repair to a quiet artists' colony in France where she can recuperate. There she meets Robert Louis Stevenson, ten years her junior, who is instantly smitten with the earthy, independent and opinionated belle Americaine.

A woman ahead of her time, Fanny does not immediately take to the young lawyer who longs to devote his life to literature, and who would eventually write such classics as Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In time, though, she succumbs to Stevenson's charms. The two begin a fierce love affair, marked by intense joy and harrowing darkness, which spans decades as they travel the world for the sake of his health. Eventually they settled in Samoa, where Robert Louis Stevenson is buried underneath the epitaph:

Under the wide and starry sky, 

Dig the grave and let me lie.

Glad did I live and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:

Here he lies where he longed to be;

Home is the sailor, home from sea,

And the hunter home from the hill. 

(Requiem, Robert Louis Stevenson)

Though most of the books I read are YA fantasies, occasionally I do try out some other genres as well, for the purpose of broadening my perspective. Under the Wide and Starry Sky is precisely the case of such experiment. While I appreciate the interesting story and Nancy Horan's excellent writing, this is simply not the kind of books for me. I struggled quite a bit trying to rate it and the 2 stars you see here reflect nothing except personal taste.

Under the Wide and Starry Sky is a historical fiction centered around Scottish novelist Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife Frances Van de Grift Osbourne Stevenson. It traced through around thirty years of their relationship and drew an amazing portrayal of 19th century Europe and America. 

One may find this book similar to a memoir except that the events recounted were somewhat fictional. But the point still stands because the story is incredibly detailed with a lot of historical facts referenced. It is clear to me that Nancy Horan did an exceptional job studying her characters and used her words quite meticulously when depicting each individual scene. As a result, the characters are very much alive to me and so are the places they travel to. 

Despite all the strength in writing, this is a book I cannot bring myself to love purely because of its plodding pacing. Things happen rather slowly through this almost 500-page book while I'm already accustomed to fast-paced and action-packed YA novels. It also does not have a main drama that overarches the whole story since it is more of a biography than anything. Thus unsurprisingly, I found myself bored over it not just once. I will, however, recommend it to people who are interested in Louis Stevenson's adventures and experiences as the thoroughness and accuracy are without a doubt outstanding.

My Rating: ★★ (2 stars)

(A copy of this book was kindly provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.)