Outlander

Okay, so I realize this book is 20 years old, but I must have missed it back then because I don't remember reading it. And I think I would have remembered this 700-page, lose-yourself-in-it page-turner.

It's 1945, and English nurse Claire Beauchamp Randall is on a trip to Scotland with her husband following their separation during WWII. While there she walks through a standing stone and finds herself back in the Scotland of 1743 - a very different time. There she meets her husband's nasty ancestor Jonathan Randall, a likeable but suspicious bunch of MacKenzie's who take her under their collective wing, and a handsome young man named Jamie who offers a little something more.

I am a sucker for time-travel novels, particularly when the traveler goes back to some particularly interesting era of British history, and author Diana Gabaldon does it particularly well. The characters are really complex and likeable, and pretty realistic from my assessment. And the story just sweeps you up - it's really a page turner.

If you like British history with a little romance and fish-out-of-water thrown in, this is the novel for you. And apparently the first in a series... I just put the second one on hold at the library. That's a testament to how good these are - they're 20 years old and still on reserve!

Outlander

The Space Between Us

This is a really lovely, moving novel by Thrity Umrigar, about two women in modern-day India. Sera is a wealthy Parsi woman, and Bhima is her illiterate long-time servant. Umrigar tells the story from the perspective of both women, and in doing so shows how people's lives can be both very different and eerily similar at the same time.

Bhima has been Sera's servant forever, and they have seen each other through the hardships of each other's lives. Bhima has endured more than many women could - the betrayal of her husband, the death of her child, and the descent from the lower class into the life of the slum. But Sera has helped along the way, and has even paid to send Bhima's granddaughter to college, so that Maya will have a better life than her grandmother. Sera's life hasn't been easy, either, with a crazy, evil mother-in-law and an abusive husband, but Bhima has been there to nurse her through the pain, and Sera's daughter, Dinaz, views Bhima as almost a second mother.

But when something happens to come between the two families, we see who really is stronger, and we see who is more deserving of respect. It was a really great read - I couldn't put it down.

The Space Between Us