A Dude’s Appreciation of Outlander

People have struggled to categorize Outlander ever since the first book came out back in 1991. The story is part romance, part adventure novel, and so much more. Gabaldon says it best on her website: “Here we all are, still trying to figure out what the heck you call books that nobody can describe, but that fortunately most people seem to enjoy.”
I was first introduced to the books back in 2008, when I was leaving for a trip to Nepal to teach English. I had just graduated high school, and while I was fortunate enough to have been abroad before, I hadn’t been so far from home or had to plan such an extensive trip.
A few days before I left, my mother sat next to me on my bed and looked over a list of what I planned to bring.

“You’ll need a good book for such a long flight,” she said—about 36 hours from JFK to Kathmandu. She left and came back with Outlander and third book Voyager in hand: “I can’t find the second book, Drums of Autumn, but it’s okay. You won’t miss too much if you skip right to the third.”
I started the first book after I said goodbye to my family at the airport, and finished it a few weeks into my trip. Since I’m not a fast reader, that is a testament to both the quality of the writing and the vast amount of time I had on my hands.

The tangible parallels between my life and Claire Randall’s were hard to ignore. I had been transplanted into a new culture very different from my own. I had a girlfriend back home who I thought of constantly, my very own Frank. While I never met a “Jamie,” I made friends with some of my fellow teachers and staff, and was lucky enough to be on the receiving end of an overwhelming amount of friendship and kindness.
The house my nonprofit put me in was on the outskirts of Kathmandu. At 5 a.m. I woke up with the sun to the sound of farmers starting their day’s work, and, inspired by the Gabaldon books, I began to use that time to write fanfiction. After a couple hours of writing, I left to teach martial arts at the school before classes started.
That fanfiction has since been lost. I remember it featured a group of men and women in a different universe who needed to acquire an artifact with time travel capabilities. The artifact was kept in a fort overlooking a rambling cityscape based on the view from my window. There was pistol fighting and lovemaking as well as a lot of stabbing and skullduggery. It was awful, but writing it kept me entertained.
Soon, I had finished Voyager and couldn’t find any of Gabaldon’s books in local stores. In the absence of her writing, I tried to fill the void by rereading the books I had, and creating my own stories. To quote George Bernard Shaw, “Imitation is not just the sincerest form of flattery—it’s the sincerest form of learning.” That is what her stories left me with, a desire to create and to learn.
The Outlander series is a story people from different walks of life—such as a mother and her son—or from drastically different reading demographics can relate to. Claire’s journey connected strongly to parts of my own journey through Nepal and through life, and I think others will have a similar connection. Plus, it’s cool for large, bearded men to enjoy a good romance novel. Don’t listen to anyone who says otherwise.
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