Outlander: Biting and Sad Romance

At the end of each physical therapy session, Evan ices my leg. While my leg chills for fifteen minutes, I usually read a book. I have been reading a lot lately, as I have a lot of down time since my surgery. A few weeks ago, I ran into a friend, Theresa, at the grocery store and she recommend I read Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. Theresa had previously recommend I watch "Bletchley Circle," so I took her advice.  She said Outlander was a little steamy, but I wasn't deterred. "My book club read it and all of the husbands seemed to appreciate it," Theresa laughed. "They said we should read more books like this."

I was in the middle of another book I has bought, and decided to reserve Outlander from the library. It is the first book in a long series of adventures of a time traveling English woman who leaves 1945 and visits Scotland in 1743.

Yesterday, Evan iced my leg. He wandered off to take care of his next patient, and I got out my copy of Outlander. Before I cracked it open, the woman on the bench next next me said, "Oh I love that book! Have you seen the tv show?"

Before I could answer, the physical therapist working on her chimed in, as did another patient on the exercise bike. Three of the three women in this small area had both read the book and watched the television show. These women ranged in age from late twenties to mid-forties. I didn't realize this book had such a following.

"It is like Game of Thrones for women," one of PT women offered. "They show both men and women. Game of Thrones just shows women." Interesting.

I guess that explained why I had to enter my birthday into the Starz website before I could watch the show. I had watched the first episode earlier in the week. While the book was written in 1991, the television series started last year. I entered my real birthday, not just random date that would show I was older than twenty-one. After I was the show, I thought maybe this show is just for middle age women and the website folks had to make sure I was middle-aged. I am surprised I didn't have to check my gender because this is show is chick-flick central. Sure, almost all of the main characters are men and there are lots of battle scenes that take place in the Highlands of Scotland, but this is mostly a romance.

Claire, the main character, has a husband back in England, but she meets up with the younger and much hunkier Jamie in Scotland. Gabaldon, the author, was married with three young kids living in Arizona at the time. A woman back from serving as a nurse during WWII gets to leave her boring life and face dangers and adventures in another era. She can hook up with someone else scot-free (pun intended) because her husband hasn't been born yet. The young buck thinks she is brilliant and adores her for it. This is pure cougar fantasy. Sign me up.

I am not a regular romance novel reader. The closest I get to romances are Jane Austen novels. (Next on my list of books is Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld, a modern take on Pride and Prejudice.) I am getting to the point where I am closer to the age of the mothers and aunts in these books than I am to the heroines. What is a middle-aged woman to do? It is sad when I can relate to Elizabeth Bennet's Aunt Gardiner better than I can to Elizabeth. I suppose that is why romances are so popular, and yet so difficult to read. For middle-aged women who have already been in the game and settled down, this gives us a chance to live vicariously through fictional characters. It still brings on a certain sadness to know that those days of young love are far, far behind me. I guess after I got married I was so busy having kids I didn't really think about romance. Now my kids are older and I am recovering from my knee, I have more time to ponder.

Time travel in a way dissolves age, I think this maybe one reason why Outlander reaches to out so many readers. In one sense, Jamie, the hot young Scotsman, is five years younger than Claire. In another way, he is 197 years older. Time travel smoothes out those kind of wrinkles.

Oh and the biting. This is the second book I've read during my recovery/convalescence where women have bitten men on the lower lip and drew blood during amorous times. I don't really get the lip biting thing. It seems both gross and mean. I asked Jack about this.

"Have you ever been bitten while having sex?" I asked.

"That is the strangest question someone who has ever been married for twenty years has ever been asked," he said.

"Seriously," I asked.

"Have you ever bitten me?"

"No," I said.

"Then no," he said. "I would get a canker sore or two and that would not be fun."