Cross Stitch by Diana Gabaldon is such a long novel – around 860 pages – that I wrote this review in stages. When I started writing, I was 250-350 pages into the book. Now I’m closer to 675 pages and my opinions haven’t changed at all. But this is less a book review than a developmental editor’s first impressions of the book.

The Outlander series is massively successful and has been adapted for streaming TV. The screen version has doubtless brought the characters and story to an even bigger audience. And that, in turn, will have led to more book sales.

I’ve only seen the first two series and a bit of the third one – if I remember correctly. I’d once tried to read the book some years ago but bailed out around page 72. I don’t think I was really in the mood to read it then.

I am more in the mood now. And I couldn’t help but read it at least a bit through the filter of developmental editing.

The setup

Gabaldon fairly sets up Claire’s normal life with Frank during their second honeymoon in Inverness. She doesn’t enter the stones for quite a while. This makes sense since Frank and their marriage need to be set up first.

We need to see what Claire leaves behind when she passes through the stones.

And from that, we also get the contrast between post-war austerity and the eighteenth century.

Another thing the first 60 pages accomplish is to fill the reader in on Black Jack Randall, Frank’s redcoat ancestor.

When Claire meets him, she’s at least armed with a little information – and so is the reader.

We also learn about Claire’s nursing background and her newer interest in botany, the latter encouraged by Frank. Both will become vital in giving her a role and some status when she travels to the past. Healers are a big deal in the days before antibiotics and other modern medicines.

There are other little things set up too – including Roger, who is more important later in the series.

And both the reading of the tea leaves and the palm reading create some foreshadowing of Claire’s future. Add to that Frank seeing the ghost of the highlander that watched Claire through the hotel window.

The reader will know the ghost to be Jamie. But neither Claire nor Frank know that yet.

Moving at a leisurely pace

Because this book was published in 1991, it is a great deal meatier than most modern novels.

This was the time before social media. A time when the modern attention span was in a better state.

But there were times in the 1946 Inverness chapters when I wondered if things shouldn’t have been speeded up just a tad. But in 1991, I might have had a different opinion on this. And, of course, it doesn’t help when you’ve seen the television series first.

Nevertheless, it seemed important to build up the ‘modern’ world first, to show the contrast with the old world. And to understand Claire well, it helps to see her in her own time.

Where the plot stretches credulity

Funnily enough, passing through the stones into the past was not the part I found hard to believe. No, it was much of her thoughts and behaviour after she arrived there.

While it’s clear that she and Frank were trying to reconnect after their years apart in the war, their marriage didn’t seem so bad that she’d forget about him so easily.

Days and weeks go by with barely a reminder that he ever existed. There are times when she ought to be reminded – any reference to her as a widow, for example.

Your characters are impacted by their pasts

As a developmental editor, I’ve often seen manuscripts where a character forgets important bits of their past and no longer reacts to past trauma. Even when there are obvious trigger points, the character doesn’t remember or isn’t impacted.

If you want to create realistic and three-dimensional characters, then it’s worth thinking about how someone in the real world would react in the same situation.

In the real world, a woman separated from her husband would long to get back to him and would worry about him being frantic about her whereabouts. She would frequently think about him, and anything in her new vicinity that might remind her of him or her marriage would trigger a thought, an emotion, a memory.

Claire tells us that she thinks about Frank a lot. But she doesn’t show us the evidence. Not in her thoughts, memories, longings, or moods.

A missed opportunity for internal conflict

In reality, she’d be suffering from a massive internal conflict – stuck at the castle, in this strange world, and wondering if she’d ever see Frank again.

But in the book, she settles into life there a little too easily.

We’re told that she’s busy with healing and so on, but this would not stop her thinking about Frank or the world she’s left behind.

But this leads to other issues too. Claire ought to wonder more about how she comes to be here. She should miss modern amenities more. She ought to question her reality – even wondering if it’s all a dream.

A real person, transported to the past, would be thinking: this can’t be true. They’d likely be dazed for days or weeks. They might acclimatize over time, but every so often they’d be thrown back into a clash of past and present and the impossibility of their new reality.

I’m not sure how other readers feel about Claire largely not thinking of Frank. Since she means to try and escape the castle, thinking of him more, and showing how much he means to her, would heighten the emotional incentive. As it is, she seems oddly detached from him.

It’s as if Frank is no longer real.

Of course, he doesn’t exist in this period and she might ponder how he feels very distant and unreal now. But that doesn’t really happen in an obvious way.

Few memories, little conflict, reduced motivations

There’s a chain of events, goals, and desires that ought to propel her forward into risking escape. Frank should be one of the prime motivators. Not to mention her worrying that she might never escape this world.

She might also think of Black Jack Randall just a teensy bit more – he almost assaulted her. If the events of the book really happened, she’d also picture the day she gets to tell Frank how charming his ancestor really was. Though she’d also consider the likelihood of Frank believing her.

At the end of what would be described as act one, Claire has failed to escape back to the stone circle, but she has left the castle. She’s now on the road with Jamie, Dougal, and Callum’s lawyer. Claire hopes to make a getaway during the journey.

To the circle of standing stones. And with luck, back home.

Cross Stitch

Even here, Claire is not thinking about Frank, which I found rather jarring. Is it meant to reveal something about the true nature of their marriage? It doesn’t really come across that way.

When Claire’s forgetfulness creates an odd detachment

It seems more that the plot and the details of this old world have submerged Frank and her memories of him.

Yet, in reality, since she is not in a relationship with Jamie yet, she should feel that pull towards Frank. He should be in her thoughts more. There could have been a few little memories scattered about. Just to flesh out their relationship a bit more beyond the move to the past. And also to show that she does actually care about him.

Sometimes it seems she doesn’t. Her narrative voice is often oddly detached. There’s also a lack of reflection at times.

As I read further and further into the story, I started to wonder when she was going to give Frank any thought again. When would be the next occasion? And I started tearing strips off the paper I was using as a bookmark, and inserting these strips into any place where Claire gave thought to the past. There weren’t many strips of paper inserted.

On page 433, Claire asks herself what she’s doing here ‘for the thousandth time’. But I saw no evidence of her asking this over and over in earlier scenes. On the next page, she talks about ‘which husband?’ as she has a jolt of panic and remembers her halfway-successful attempt to escape. There’s some reflection on her situation, and then she’s immersed back into the eighteenth-century present again.

Sidelining the modern world helps immersion

Keeping her past at bay does allow for greater immersion in the Jamie storyline. It means that there are fewer points of friction and interruption in the historical world, but it’s precisely that clash between modern and historical, between the two lives, that could have created greater internal conflict.

In truth, she doesn’t really try hard enough to escape. When she finally has the opportunity to go through the stones, Frank has been largely absent for around 500 pages, so he’s distant to the reader and also to Claire. Which makes it conveniently easy for her to make her choice.

Another thing that doesn’t get dealt with much is the absence of modern conveniences. Claire’s time with Uncle Lamb comes in handy here because it means she grew up used to being without modern amenities. But that might also be a missed opportunity in terms of showing the clash between twentieth century and eighteenth century.

Weighing up narrative choices and outcomes

I think I understand why the author made her choice. Had Claire been constantly thinking of home, her attention would have been less on those around her and the immersion in the eighteenth century could have been less powerful.

Nevertheless, as I got to the halfway mark and beyond, I wondered what Frank’s absence was meant to signify. A weak marriage, a narrative choice to keep the plot rooted in the eighteenth century? Or maybe just addressing the basic problem of introducing Frank first, leading to the reader’s loyalty first going with him, and then running into a clash of loyalties later with Jamie. Sidelining Frank avoids this problem.

I do think it comes at a price. There are character and psychological credibility issues, not to mention missed opportunities for internal conflict and interesting contrasts.

Try putting yourself in her position. Ask yourself, how much will you miss your old life and the conveniences… not to mention your husband?

And the dangers of this old eighteenth-century world must be all too obvious to Claire. Should she really want to stay there long while there’s a chance of getting away?

Gabaldon went to the bother of setting up Frank and Claire at the beginning. He comes back in a later book, and maybe that was her real intention. To set him up because he won’t be around again for quite a while.

Conclusion

I’ve not yet finished the book. It feels like it’s taking forever to read and I have to tackle it in chunks. There are also quite a few controversial scenes that reviewers have pointed out elsewhere. Relating to sexual and domestic violence. However, I was more interested in developmental issues. And it was this issue of Claire’s detachment from her modern past and past events in the eighteenth century that particularly stood out.

I think the TV series makes a bit more effort with Claire’s past. Including a memorable scene of her picking plants to the tune of Run Rabbit Run. A great clash between two centuries that’s perhaps easier to achieve on screen.

Another advantage of a screen adaptation is all the little visual clues and details – like a wobbly line of sewing machine stitches in series three. Claire, discovering Jamie didn’t die at Culloden, decides to go back to the past and transforms some of her modern clothing into something that would pass in the seventeen hundreds. She’s perhaps a better surgeon than she is a seamstress. Though she still does a great job.

If you haven’t seen the series, the costumes, locations, and cinematography are fabulous. But whether I read any more books in the series remains to be seen.

In the meantime, another chunky historical novel worth reading is Hilary Mantel’s A Place of Greater Safety, also set in the eighteenth century. My review of the French Revolution epic is below.