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Title: Good fun
Review: It's amazing that I could follow, let alone enjoy, this classic adventure tale, considering large parts of it are told in an almost impenetrable Scottish dialect. But somehow the sheer joyous energy of Stevenson's story-telling busts down the linguistic barrier. When I was a little kid, I devoured an abridged picture book version of Kidnapped. Only shards of memory remained -- a treacherous staircase, a shattered skylight, something about the Jacobite rebellion of the 1740s. When I finally (decades later) got around to reading Kidnapped, I enjoyed it immensely. Its virtues include a genial narrator with a good sense of humor and a character for the ages: the vain, big-hearted, stalwart yet ridiculous Alan Breck Stewart. The most thrilling scenes are in the first half of the novel. The second half is a lot slower, though it offers up some treasures too, including a bagpipe contest between Alan and his blood rival, a son of the legendary Rob Roy MacGregor.
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