Kidnapped: a journey up, around, and through the Highlands

Kidnapped (1886)- Robert Louis Stevenson (222 pages)

Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson surrounds the adventure of David Balfour. From his childhood home deep in the Lowlands, to meeting his Uncle, his kidnapping, and misadventures that follow. Balfour’s tale is action-packed and in my edition accompanied by a map of his adventures up and around the Highlands which allows for a great visual of his journey. I don’t want to reveal too much of the plot but much of the tale surrounds David and Alan Breck’s journey through the Highlands with danger on all sides.

When I first decided to read this book I thought the readability would match the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or Treasure Island. Both tales were very easy reads as shown by my high readability scores. Kidnapped is very different. It is not the overall action or thematic discourses that make the adventure hard to follow but rather the idioms and colloquialisms that Stevensons uses when he writes. Both David Balfour and Alan Breck are Scottish and thus Stevenson writes in a way that uses many Scottish phrases and wordings. This made it very difficult to read at times.

Unlike Atlas Shrugged or the Screwtape Letters, Kidnapped is not ripe with themes but rather focuses on one main theme, justice. The two most poignant characters to explain this theme are the main characters, David and Alan. David, the purer of the two, has his justice wrapped together tightly with revenge. Justice to him is reclaiming what is his and hopefully becoming a gentleman. Alan, a man of great loyalty to his clan, is consumed by past actions and events. His justice means killing a man for his name, believing he has done right for his clan. I think Stevenson suggests justice sits somewhere between the two of them, not looking too far in the future like David and not looking too far in the past like Alan but rather living squarely in the middle, in the present.

After spending such an extended period reading Atlas Shrugged. I wanted an easy, fast adventure to change the pace, and Kidnapped was just that. While it was not as easy a read as I initially thought it would be, it is still very much an action-driven tale filled with some scenes of reflection but nothing near Atlas Shrugged. I think the pacing and story arc is very similar to Treasure Island and I believe that is a good thing.

Overall, I think this filled what I thought Kidnapped would be: an easy, exciting, adventure. Kidnapped is not a thousand-page epic with incredible character progression and thematic discourses that last hundreds of pages but I still believe it was a great read. Stevenson does a masterful job of making a very condensed adventure that still strikes all the needed boxes. In many ways creating such a great short novel like this is more impressive than a 500-page adventure where you have much more room to create progression. I think Kidnapped would be a great weekend or vacation read. Quick enough to perhaps even finish on your trip while giving you a nice, easy read to calm your mind.

As always, my scoring breakdown is below. Thanks for reading!

Score: 6.3- An enjoyable adventure of a young man and his attempt to reclaim what is his.

Readability: 7- A more difficult read than I initially thought due to Stevenson’s attempt to adopt the Scottish vernacular.

Thematic Questions: 6- A great amount of material on justice and the variations of it.

Enjoyment: 6- An enjoyable read with some level of tension but a little too linear for me.