TEST
The Stolen Years is alternately tedious, gripping, terrible, and quite good. It begins with a main character who’s easy to hate, follows his evolution in the intense middle chapters, but then tapers off into an unsatisfying and forgettable ending. It’s the ambitious – perhaps too ambitious – story of one weak man whose redemption seems too little, and comes too late.
It also covers some 80 years, compressing the lives and loves of several generations into an improbable 448 pages – you jump from 1918 in one chapter to 1932 in the next, after which there are a couple more instances of 20-year leapfrogging. Stolen years, indeed.
A battlefield explosion in 1917 separates fraternal twins Gavin and Angus MacLeod. Shell-shocked and believing his brother dead, Angus returns to Scotland to claim Gavin’s inheritance. Angus also marries his brother’s fiancé, Flora, whom they both loved but who has pledged her heart only to Gavin.
Yet Gavin actually survived. He creates a new identity, takes over a business empire, and vows to exact revenge on the twin who he believes has betrayed him. When the brothers’ paths cross again, Gavin realizes that he will do anything to reclaim the woman he has loved and lost. His quest for a happy ending will continue through the 1990’s, when his descendants will pay the price of his life-altering mistakes.
Although The Stolen Years beings with the two brothers’ estrangement, the story is truly about Gavin’s coming of age. But perhaps due to insufficient length, the book proves to be too facile an account of complex issues. The result is a dark hero who, despite the author’s best efforts, never really emerges from the shadow of his sins.
The first third of the book chronicles young Gavin’s (mis)fortunes after he’s presumed dead. He unerringly falls into one safe haven after another, finally hitting the jackpot when he’s informally adopted by a wealthy American family. Before his character matures, he’s had more women than James Bond, starring in many love scenes that you’d rather not have read, as well as fathering unknown children.
But Gavin (who now goes by the name of Dexter Ward) redeems himself somewhat, and his story picks up against a compelling backdrop: World War II. In France, “Dexter” uses his porcelain business to pass on German military secrets to the Allies, and later helps organize the scattered Resistance forces. Significantly older and wiser now, he meets his first love again. Married to Angus but still in love with Gavin, Flora is completely in the dark about Dexter’s true identity. To avoid blowing his cover, Gavin must forgo what he really wants: the woman he should never have let go in the first place. This poignant irony is the high point of the book, as the confused, immature gigolo grows into a responsible man.
However, it’s difficult to erase the memory of the younger Gavin. While there is nothing wrong with a dark character who inspires controversy, what spells the difference between a truly complex story and a flat one is how these issues are treated. Fans of romance, especially, will find Gavin to be an ambiguous hero, and not only because of his infidelities. The choices he makes in relation to his son and his brother raise uncomfortable moral questions – questions which the book doesn’t satisfactorily answer.
Perhaps there are simply too many things on the author’s plate. Aside from both World Wars, there’s also a heavy sense of divine intervention, the curse of the MacLeods’ ancestors, and Flora’s third eye (she sees dead people). What could have been a rich story is spread too thin; you follow the characters’ lives for generations, but you see only glimpses that translate easily into stereotypes. For instance, Angus’s character is disappointingly anemic, while Flora is a doormat. The seams of the book are bursting with stories that it can’t explore properly. The ending is perforated with too many holes to hold all the plotlines in, and feels rushed and anticlimactic.
Those who manage not to throw this book against the wall – especially after Gavin’s ménage a trois – will find its defining moment in the World War II chapters. Those parts are just too good for the book to deserve a grade much below average. But ultimately, The Stolen Years raises too many questions, cruises over them too fast, and left me with more to ask in the end. Most of all, it left me with the feeling that The Stolen Years aren’t worth reliving at all.
Grade: C-
Book Type: Historical Fiction
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 28/01/01
Publication Date: 2001
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Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.