Under the Wide and Starry Sky

Summary (from the publisher): The passionate and turbulent story of Robert Louis Stevenson and his tempestuous American wife, Fanny.

At the age of thirty-five, Fanny van de Grift Osbourne leaves her philandering husband in San Francisco and sets sail for Belgium to study art with her three children and a nanny in tow. Not long after her arrival, however, tragedy strikes, and Fanny and her brood repair to a quiet artists' colony in France where she can recuperate. There she meets Robert Louis Stevenson, ten years her junior, who is instantly smitten with the earthy, independent and opinionated belle Americaine.

A woman ahead of her time, Fanny does not immediately take to the young lawyer who longs to devote his life to literature, and who would eventually write such classics as Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In time, though, she succumbs to Stevenson's charms. The two begin a fierce love affair, marked by intense joy and harrowing darkness, which spans decades as they travel the world for the sake of his health. Eventually they settled in Samoa, where Robert Louis Stevenson is buried underneath the epitaph:

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

(Requiem, Robert Louis Stevenson)

Review: This novel tells the story of the marriage between writer Robert Louis Stevenson ad his wife, Fanny van de Grift Osbourne, mostly from Fanny's perspective. At the age of 35, Fanny leaves her husband after discovering yet another affair. She takes her three children to Belgium to study art, but when that falls through, moves to an artists' colony in France. There she meets the sickly Robert Louis Stevenson, who is a decade younger than her. Although they do not immediately attract, Fanny eventually falls for the charming aspiring author and the two marry. Their marriage, although turbulent, spans decades, and the two travelled the world together, constantly in search of a climate that would ease his health troubles. 

It was interesting learning more about the famous author through a fictional lens, but I was disappointed with this novel. There was a gulf between the conclusion of one chapter and the beginning of another, the perspective occasionally randomly switched to Robert, and there was a lack of deep characterization. Overall, the novel reads as if the author had done significant research and was attempting to write a biography including all the facts uncovered in her research. In other words, the novel suffers from attempts to include as much historical facts as possible and too little attention to characterization and narrative flow. Perhaps this could have been improved had the author focused on one segment of the couple's life, rather than attempting to capture their entire relationship in one novel. Near the end, its very clear that the two had a very strained partnership, but Horan attempts to create a harmonious conclusion, with apologies and reinstated affection occurring between the two. After several years of going their separate ways, Robert suddenly has a new and deeper understanding of his wife; "Fanny's art was in how she had lived her own extraordinary life. She was her best creation" (444). This touching reunification between the two at the very end of their marriage felt a bit forced and unbelievable. 

The title of this book is drawn from the epitaph that Stevenson wrote for his own gravestone but it also sums up the vast travels that Robert and Fanny completed, as well as the turbulent emotions felt by both at various times during their marriage. 

Stars: 2.5