soph (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophia_sol) wrote2022-07-21 12:01 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2022-07-21 12:01 pm
Outcast, by Rosemary Sutcliff
I still endlessly love Rosemary Sutcliff's writing. And this is a book by her that I THOUGHT I hadn't read, but the further I got into it the more I was like.... this is weirdly very familiar. So maybe I have read it before? Either in the last 14 years I read it but forgot to write it down, or I read it prior to starting to keep lists? At any rate it was great to revisit!
This one features a boy named Beric, whose birth parents were Romans who died in a shipwreck and resulted in Beric being raised in a British family. But because of his origins he's always just a little bit an outsider to others in his village, and eventually when he's 15 he's cast out due to fears that his presence is causing bad luck.
The rest of the book is his attempts to find a place for himself in Roman society, given that the British people he felt he belonged with no longer want him, and spending a lot of time going from bad to worse in terms of his experiences. By the end he's a traumatised and broken man, but finally manages to find the belonging he's been searching for his whole life, and is able to recognize the ways that there have been at least some people all along who have valued him for himself.
It's a wonderful book, and very heart-wrenching to read, watching Beric's will to live and ability to think well of people continually beaten down over the course of his experiences, but it still manages a satisfying ending!
It was very funny though to realise as I approached the end of the book that the other book this one most reminds me of is Black Beauty. The two books come from different contexts and have different goals, but the overall life trajectory and experiences of the two main characters is remarkably similar! Kind of makes Outcast come across as an anti-slavery book, lol, when you make the comparison. Which like. It is? But not in nearly so goal-oriented a way as Black Beauty is. This is no Uncle Tom's Cabin, written with a clear agenda in mind to change the beliefs of its readers!
Anyway Sutcliff continues to be great at the nature descriptions as always, and it was a pleasure to read a Sutcliff for the first time since getting into birds and being able to appreciate how she approaches birds with far more care and attention than most authors I read! Specific bird species are mentioned, of a wide variety of types, that are suitable to the time and place they are found! And also a particular species of bird is thematically relevant! It's great.
This one features a boy named Beric, whose birth parents were Romans who died in a shipwreck and resulted in Beric being raised in a British family. But because of his origins he's always just a little bit an outsider to others in his village, and eventually when he's 15 he's cast out due to fears that his presence is causing bad luck.
The rest of the book is his attempts to find a place for himself in Roman society, given that the British people he felt he belonged with no longer want him, and spending a lot of time going from bad to worse in terms of his experiences. By the end he's a traumatised and broken man, but finally manages to find the belonging he's been searching for his whole life, and is able to recognize the ways that there have been at least some people all along who have valued him for himself.
It's a wonderful book, and very heart-wrenching to read, watching Beric's will to live and ability to think well of people continually beaten down over the course of his experiences, but it still manages a satisfying ending!
It was very funny though to realise as I approached the end of the book that the other book this one most reminds me of is Black Beauty. The two books come from different contexts and have different goals, but the overall life trajectory and experiences of the two main characters is remarkably similar! Kind of makes Outcast come across as an anti-slavery book, lol, when you make the comparison. Which like. It is? But not in nearly so goal-oriented a way as Black Beauty is. This is no Uncle Tom's Cabin, written with a clear agenda in mind to change the beliefs of its readers!
Anyway Sutcliff continues to be great at the nature descriptions as always, and it was a pleasure to read a Sutcliff for the first time since getting into birds and being able to appreciate how she approaches birds with far more care and attention than most authors I read! Specific bird species are mentioned, of a wide variety of types, that are suitable to the time and place they are found! And also a particular species of bird is thematically relevant! It's great.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject