A Scots Quair: Sunset Song, Cloud Howe, Grey Granite

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A Scots Quair: Sunset Song, Cloud Howe, Grey Granite (A Scots Quair)

by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Ian Campbell (Editor)

4.16 of 5 stars 4.16 · rating details · 256 ratings · 30 reviews

A Scots Quair is revolutionary—innovative in its form, deft and humorous in its use of the Scots language, courageous in its characterization and politics. Central to the trilogy is Chris Guthrie, one of the most remarkable female characters in modern literature. In Sunset Song, Gibbon's finest achievement, the reader follows Chris through her girlhood in a tight-knit Scot...more

Paperback, 696 pages

Published October 1st 2006 by Birlinn Ltd (first published 1932)

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Dec 07, 2012 Laura rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Laura by: Bettie

Shelves: hf-scotland, passport-books, family-saga, fiction-20th-century, historical-fiction, read-2012

A gift from my dear friend Bettie!!

This trilogy is composed by the following books:

4* Sunset Song, see My review here.

3* Cloud Howe, see My review here.

In this last book, Grey Granite, there are four sections which are called after different constituents of granite: Epidote ( a greenish silicate of calcium, aluminum, and iron), Sphene (whose crystals are wedge-shaped and which contains the element titanium - strong, light, corrosion-resistant), Apatite (consisting of calcium phosphate and fluori...more

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Jan 02, 2013 Suzie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: old-favourites, loved-books, six-star-reads, i-cried

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Already read Sunset Song, probably going to give it a quick reread then tackle the rest.

Excellent. Just excellent. Review to follow.

EDIT: now I can't remember any of the great stuff I had to say about this book, goddamnit. Essentially, I think this is the best female character I have ever seen written in a book, and it was written by a man. What that should tell you I don't know. Too often I feel women are written in broad brush strokes, far more so than men - they're either decidedly within the...more Already read Sunset Song, probably going to give it a quick reread then tackle the rest.

Excellent. Just excellent. Review to follow.

EDIT: now I can't remember any of the great stuff I had to say about this book, goddamnit. Essentially, I think this is the best female character I have ever seen written in a book, and it was written by a man. What that should tell you I don't know. Too often I feel women are written in broad brush strokes, far more so than men - they're either decidedly within the traditional feminine stereotype, or an over-the-top caricature of what is seen as being opposite from feminine. It's late, my words are not of the good kind. Chris Guthrie is realistic - she is warm and kind and eminently sensible and rational, and sometimes cool, and sometimes stupid, and sometimes weak, but she is ALWAYS real.

I also love the language. I'm Scottish, and in some ways it feels completely alien to me. That's part of what I find beautiful about it.

The texture of the book, its root in the land, as it were, is sometimes a little hard to swallow, but for the most part it's a good anchor to keep the story feeling cohesive, given the dramatic changes that take place between Sunset Song and Cloud Howe, and Cloud Howe and Grey Granite.

Sunset song is by far the best of the three novels. It has the best characters and provided the only actual tearing up moment for me - the deaths of Chae Strachan and Long Rob of the Mill, plus OH GOD EUAN SR BREAK MY HEART YOU GIT. The secondary characters are so rich that you are really absorbed by the world of Blaewearie. Cloud Howe was equally easily my least favourite book - the secondary characters were pretty much universally unlikeable, and while I know that was the point, I missed having someone to "root" for as it were. Dalziel of the Meiklebogs was absolutely excellently slimey, but I missed having someone like Long Rob to temper things. Grey Granite is wonderful solely for Euan Jr's character development and the awesome *woman who owned the guest house with Chris and whose name I have completely forgotten, sigh*.

Anyway, nothing endures, as well we know, but thank god this book has, at least for a while. I beg every Scottish person I know to read it if they want an understanding of what has happened to their country over the last hundred years, and I beg every feminist I know to read it, because this is an important portrayal of a woman's life.

I want to say more about this, but I can't. It's a bit the opposite of my PopCo review: I actively stopped myself from rambling in it but I could have gone for absolute days about what is, ultimately, though a very good book, not anywhere near the level of this. ASQ is one of those rare "six star" books - where PopCo means something right now, ASQ will still mean something in fifty years, or a hundred years. I think if I break this down book-by-book then it might make things easier.

Sunset Song:

The most important, and beautiful, thing about Sunset Song is the character crafting. The setting is, inevitably, important, given the background of the struggle between agricultural survival against industrialisation, and, as I said earlier, the "rooting" of the book in the land - Chris's constant return to the standing stones, particularly at times of distress, is obviously not accidental, and is used to structure the whole book. The structure is maybe the only thing I could nitpick with, to be honest - eight shorter chapters in place of the four longer ones would maybe have worked better, but I am REALLY nitpicking. I tend to prefer shorter chapters anyway, so it's maybe just that - a preference. ANYWAY, the characterisation. Oh good lord, I was so on the side of these... I'm going to finish this in the morning or next week, I have to sleep now or I may faint.(less)

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Jan 18, 2013 Warwick rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, scotland, wwi

A long, powerful, moving, and ultimately pitiless account of that generation in Scotland who lived (if they were lucky) through the First World War and saw the rural lives of the crofters swallowed up by a new urban society. The first book of the trilogy is the most astonishing – all the pleasures of a Bildungsroman combined with a very rich and involving portrait of life in a Scottish farming village where we get to know and care about almost every inhabitant. The coming-of-age element is the m...more

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Apr 01, 2013 Gregor Buchanan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Probably the most influential book I have ever read. This trilogy has such a sweeping emotional and philosophical trajectory that is at once tragic and celebratory...it has since dominated my conscious mind and emotional self immediately after I read the natural and deeply honest text. The narrative will be difficult for those not used to hearing the Scots dialect from the north east of Scotland but I would implore a new reader to persevere as the story held within these pages is both universal...more

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Jan 15, 2008 Marianne rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a fabulous trilogy, and I think would resonate with readers of Willa Cather (plains = bleak Scottish fields). I adored this book as a teenager.

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Feb 07, 2011 Don rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: uk-novel

Beautiful but often abstruse story of the Chris Guthrie, born into a crofting family around the turn of the last century and living her life up to the the mid century, through a period which saw the end of the small farming way of life and the rise of political radicalism amongst the subaltern classes.

Grassic (realname James Leslie Mitchell) tells the story through an almost impressionistic lens, where the landscape of the Mearns area of East Scotland evokes the moods which dominate ther lifes o...more Beautiful but often abstruse story of the Chris Guthrie, born into a crofting family around the turn of the last century and living her life up to the the mid century, through a period which saw the end of the small farming way of life and the rise of political radicalism amongst the subaltern classes.

Grassic (realname James Leslie Mitchell) tells the story through an almost impressionistic lens, where the landscape of the Mearns area of East Scotland evokes the moods which dominate ther lifes of the main characters in Chris's life. Many of the descriptive passages are heartbreakingly beautiful, with images of race clouds across hills, the sense of the storms building up over the North Sea a few miles to the east and weather systems that range across snow and sodden rain storms, and brief periods of idylic summer.

This tale of the life of a girl caught up in the drama of her life in the villages, but sensing that there is a world beyond it to which she was also connected. The trilogy sees Chris grow from a child to her adolescent years in a family dominated by a moody, unfathomable father and a mother wracked by fears from his expectations that she would produce an unlimited number of children for him. Ewan Tavendale arrives on the scene as her first love and their marriage produces anothe Ewan, their son. The Greart War emerges as the background for strains in the relationship, with Chris being left on her own with her noticeable introverted young son,

The second novel is dominated by Chris's marriage to the Rev. Robert Colquohoun and their lives together in the small industrial town of Segget. Chris and Robert live through the turbulent years of the 1920s, siding with the rural proletariat as it struggled to form unions and change its conditions of life. The failure of the General Strike breaks Roberts faith in reformist socialism and, being a man who needs faith, also breaks his heart. On their own again, Chris and Ewan move to the town of Duncairn where she runs a boarding house in partnership with another woman. Ewan's absorption in books and history is transferred to his apprenticeship in an engineering plant. By a convoluted route, and despite his lack of synmpathy with real people, he is drawn into radical socialists politics and plays a role as a strike leader.

Chris meanwhile continues to meet adversity and the death of her business partner obliges her to enter into yet another marriage - on her part loveless - to keep her boarding house business. Ewan shows himself to have much of the taciturn, even cruel streak of Chris's father, being drawn to a vision of communism cynically realistic about the working class, but seeing it as an agent of abstract historical progress towards an ultimate great destiny. Calluous in all his relationships, his mother also falls from his outlook on life as he leads hunger marches down to a London which will absorb his energies as a communist organiser.

Chris's fate is to end her days back in the Mearns, where she was born and grew to adulthood, irrevocably alone but emotionally numbed beyond the point of suffering. As she fades towards her own end back in the beauty of the Scottish countryside, the feeling is that we have heard a sad story of the end of a Scottish way of life, told from the standpoint of a great life, but ultimately lost in successive waves of bitter disappointment. (less)

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Nov 22, 2010 Ka added it

Shelves: literary-fiction, rejected

This is supposed to be the greatest Scottish novel ever written. So, I like Scotland, I like reading -- should be great. However, when you already hate a book on page 1 of nearly 700, that's not very encouraging. It might be the greatest novel in the same sense that Moby Dick is a great novel -- OK, but it's totally boring. Or maybe I'm so traumatized from slogging through Freedom that I'll never enjoy reading again.
Anyway, I put it down. Now I have to decide what shelf to move it to. I think I...more

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Feb 07, 2009 Jill rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: classic-literature

Dealing with the death of the Scottish crofter society, A Scots Quair is composed of three parts: Sunset Song, Cloud Howe, and Grey Granite. Sunset Song introduces Chris Gutherie, a daughter of crofters, as she moves to the Mearns, meets the love of her life, starts out her married life on the croft, to see it all change with the beginning of the First World War. The story continues in the second book as Chris leaves the croft to move into a local village with her second husband and the young so...more

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Feb 05, 2013 Simon Wheeler rated it 4 of 5 stars

A Scottish classic, actually a trilogy, which gives a real feel for the difficult life in Scotland in that time. The books have probably traumatised many Scottish kids that have been forced to read it at school, but reading it as an adult, and having lived for five years in Scotland, I could appreciate the story.
It starts out following the life of a young lass, growing up in rural Scotland and ends, centred more on her son in the city.
Very interesting, although you'll need an ear for the Scottis...more

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Dec 09, 2011 Ilene rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Colorful characters in a story told in colorful Scots language. (Thankfully, the edition I read had a Scots-English dictionary in the back.)

A Scots Quair is a trilogy that follows the life of a woman named Chris Guthrie in early 20th-century Scotland. The author's love for the land shines throughout the trilogy, as does his appreciation for Scottish snark and wit and small-town gossip.

This book was first described to me as a Scottish Grapes of Wrath, but now that I've read it, it seems so much...more

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May 17, 2009 Peter rated it 3 of 5 stars

Considered by many to be masterpieces of the Scots literary renaissance of the 1920's and 1930's, I liked the three books but I found Grassic Gibbon's faith in a Socialist future naive and a heavy handed motif. I also found his dismissal of Liberalism, Scottish Nationalism, and Presbyterianism as irrelevant ideologies for Scotland's future to be reminiscent of an immature and adolescent zeal.

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Dec 30, 2011 Roger Norman rated it 5 of 5 stars

I've read this twice, neither time recently, but it's not a book (three books actually) you forget. A most beautiful love story set in the most remote and appealing landscape imaginable and peopled with larger-than-life characters. Who could be larger (or longer) than Long John o' the Mill? There's no answer to that.

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Aug 08, 2011 Pat rated it 3 of 5 stars

I read the trilogy for a literature class that I attend and I did find it hard going at first. It is quite gritty and bleak - as someone else said, at first it was just depressing and then it got worse! BUT, I did find that I just had to keep going to find out what happened in all three books.

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Feb 14, 2013 Betty rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is not an easy book to read because of all the unfamiliar Scottish words. There's a limited glossary of terms in the back of the book and its usually fairly easy to figure out (or guess) the meaning of the words that aren't there. Its a great story of life in the Highlands in the early 20th Century. Loving all things Scottish, I bought this book several years ago, but just finally got the courage to read it.

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Jun 08, 2012 Tej rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is the first book I ever read that I wished I could hear on audio. Although it's prose, the writing was beautifully lyrical. It had lovely rhythm, rhyme, and alliteration. The story was quite good, too. It's essentially about capturing a glimpse of a world that is about to disappear--not just the small farm but even the Scottish language. I'm so glad I read this.

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Dec 30, 2012 Fiona rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: general-fiction, favorites, classics

I read this in 6th year of high school and it has stayed with me ever since. It's one of the most beautifully written, moving books I have ever read.

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Jun 04, 2012 Cynthia rated it 4 of 5 stars

A wonderful trilogy of novels, especially if you're into all things Scottish. The author does a very good job writing from a woman's point of view.

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Sep 08, 2011 Stephanie rated it 5 of 5 stars

I love this book. The protagonist, Chris, is one of the most complex and honest characters I have known for a long time.

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Aug 13, 2010 Clara rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favourites, made-me-cry, historical-fiction, war

A complete classic in every sense of the word, A Scots Quair really resonated with me, not only because ofbeing Scottish myself and having links with the types of community and life in all three of the books, but also because of the beauty of both the text and the characterisation. A masterpiece.

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May 11, 2010 Jess rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favourites

First read this trilogy as set reading in 5th year at school...loved it then and still loved it on second reading

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Apr 22, 2009 Jay Daze rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favourites, literature, favorites

One of my favourites. Beautiful language and characters that just make me weep. Wonderful.

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Jan 16, 2012 Sherry Chandler rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics

My comments are here.

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Jan 16, 2012 Bettie marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Recommended to Bettie by: Overbylass

Edited with introductions by Tom Crawford.

Sunset Song
Cloud Howe
Grey Granite

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Sep 15, 2012 Callum Clement rated it 4 of 5 stars

a wonderful tale, brilliantly woven

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Jul 06, 2012 Laura added it

sunset song rocks. cloud howe and grey granite, not so much

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Mar 31, 2008 Maggie rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read this book about 30 years ago I think and I have been to read it again for so long- I remember it so well- It is a wonderful illustration of life in the north east of Scotland in the early to middle 20th century.

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Apr 17, 2008 Elizabeth rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics

I read this book in Scotland, in the same area of the country where this book series takes place. I throughly enjoyed it, though at turns it becomes sad and depressing - it's still a great read.

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Nov 02, 2012 Bob rated it 4 of 5 stars

Called the classic Scottish novel. I enjoyed it.

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Apr 15, 2008 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

A four-star for the first in the trilogy, Sunset Song, but the second and third books don't live up to their predecessor.

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Mar 02, 2011 M added it · review of another edition

Shelves: stopped-reading-it

Nothing against the book. I just had to turn it back in before I was done.

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A Scots Quair: Sunset Song, Cloud Howe, Grey Granite (A Scots Quair)

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