*Many thanks to Net Galley and Random House publishing for this advanced reader's copy in exchange for an honest review.
Book synapsis(via Goodreads):
In her masterful new novel, Nancy Horan has recreated a love story that is as unique, passionate, and overwhelmingly powerful as the one between Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Cheney depicted so memorably in Loving Frank. Under the Wide and Starry Sky chronicles the unconventional love affair of Scottish literary giant Robert Louis Stevenson, author of classics including Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and American divorcee Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne. They meet in rural France in 1875, when Fanny, having run away from her philandering husband back in California, takes refuge there with her children. Stevenson too is escaping from his life, running from family pressure to become a lawyer. And so begins a turbulent love affair that will last two decades and span the world.
This insomniac's opinion:
I really wanted to like this novel. As I do every novel, of course, but even more when a publisher so kindly allows me to read it in advance of the publication date. Sigh. It was not to be.
This novel was supposedly based on some lively written communication between Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne. If so, it is quite unfortunate that this novel was not at all lively or likeable. There was only one endearing character, who dies near the beginning. Then we are left with the rest of the selfish, uninteresting characters for the duration of the novel. Truly, by the end I just wanted it to be over.
Worth staying up all night to read?
Not for me.
Rating: 2 stars
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