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A Scots Quair #1-3
A Scots Quair
Written by one of the all-time greats of Scottish literature, truly revolutionary, A Scots Quair is a trilogy of novels: Sunset Song (1932), Cloud Howe (1933) and Grey Granite (1934). At each book's core is the heroine Chris Guthrie, as she grows from a child into adulthood through the Great War to the development of communism in the 1920s. Grassic Gibbon's writing is unique and riveting, blending Scots and English in an accessible style, and eloquent in its humanity and celebration of nature.
385 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1934
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1769 people want to read
About the author
Lewis Grassic Gibbon
72 books55 followersLewis Grassic Gibbon was the pen name of the Scottish author James Leslie Mitchell.
Born in Auchterless and raised in Arbuthnott, then in Kincardineshire, Mitchell started working as a journalist for the Aberdeen Journal and the Scottish Farmer at age 16. In 1919 he joined the Royal Army Service Corps and served in Iran, India and Egypt before enlisting in the Royal Air Force in 1920. In the RAF he worked as a clerk and spent some time in the Middle East. He married Rebecca Middleton in 1925, with whom he settled in Welwyn Garden City. He began writing full-time in 1929. Mitchell wrote numerous books and shorter works under both his real name and nom de plume before his early death in 1935 of peritonitis brought on by a perforated ulcer.
Born in Auchterless and raised in Arbuthnott, then in Kincardineshire, Mitchell started working as a journalist for the Aberdeen Journal and the Scottish Farmer at age 16. In 1919 he joined the Royal Army Service Corps and served in Iran, India and Egypt before enlisting in the Royal Air Force in 1920. In the RAF he worked as a clerk and spent some time in the Middle East. He married Rebecca Middleton in 1925, with whom he settled in Welwyn Garden City. He began writing full-time in 1929. Mitchell wrote numerous books and shorter works under both his real name and nom de plume before his early death in 1935 of peritonitis brought on by a perforated ulcer.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 76 reviews
June 16, 2015
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 more remarkable because of how brilliantly Gibbon seems able to understand his female protagonist: Chris Guthrie is completely convincing. Even the many cool, introspective, observational scenes of her alone – which in less skilful hands could easily have seemed voyeuristic – have an air of genuine sympathy and truth to them.
The language the novel is told in seemed so surprising to me at first that for a long time it simply didn't remind me of anyone. The narrative voice is a synthetic kind of Scottish English, in which the cadences and vocabulary of Scots are constantly bubbling under the surface. Often the English words only make sense if you take them to be codewords standing in for their Scots cognates, such as the way ‘brave’ is used to represent the Scots word ‘braw’. At other times, especially in the dazzling opening sections of the book, there is a generous larding of terms that may have some readers south of the border, or overseas, grinning in bewilderment (if, like me, you enjoy that sort of thing):
The result is a language that – despite its being a kind of construction of Gibbon's – struck me as utterly authentic: I believe everything he says. It also allows for some subtle effects in the later books as the narrative voice becomes more fragmented and less idiosyncratically Scottish. What's more, that inherent textual tension between Englishness and Scottishness reflects a key point of the book – that Chris herself is constantly torn between what she thinks of as her ‘Scottish’ self, who loves the land and its people, and her ‘English’ self, who wants to get away from there and learn to speak ‘properly’. (This is a false dichotomy many in Scotland may recognise even today.)
You can see here the interesting narrative technique of switching to the second-person, which happens frequently throughout all the books – a ‘you’ that is sometimes Chris, sometimes a vague townsperson, always drawing the reader deep inside the emotions of the novel. Here's another example, from Cloud Howe, during a virtuoso depiction of a town fête.
You might already detect the dominant tone creeping in under these passages: bittersweet, nostalgic, somewhat disillusioned. This mood darkens across the trilogy into something you could eventually fairly call bleak. But in the first book, when Chris is still young, the bleakness is just a part of Scotland's beauty; and it's perfectly evoked with many accomplished descriptive passages.
There are parts of Sunset Song that had me almost open-mouthed with admiration, long passages which can't be quoted because their power comes from a cumulative brilliance, pages and pages which left me scribbling uncharacteristically superlative notes in my paperback: WOW! – how did he do this? – Is there ANYTHING to match this? and so on. The wedding scene was one such; another was the eventual story of what happened to Ewan in France. It's also often very funny – much funnier than I've made it sound in this review.
It's a little unfair in some ways that the second and third books in the trilogy have been overshadowed by the first. They are sadder, and the scope is less focused, but in their own way I thought they were equally fascinating and well done. More to the point, Sunset Song depends for its power on the fact that we are reading about the last throes of a particular way of life, and it's essential to Gibbon's project that he sees that through and describes exactly what comes after. To me, the first book is strong precisely because it is followed by books which detail Chris's move to a town and then a city, so that we feel the nostalgia for her country upbringing just as she does. Similarly, the urban interplay and Socialist parables of the last book only work because they come after such a naturalistic evocation of traditional Scottish country life.
Cloud Howe and Grey Granite are increasingly political, and some reviewers have even criticised Gibbon for being somehow ‘taken in’ by Socialism, but I don't recognise that at all. Sure, the writing shows a deep sympathy with the workers – as it damn well should – but there is no sentimentality here. Socialism, like religion, is dismissed as just another ideology, and if this trilogy is anything, it's unideological. The overriding message is rather that nothing at all is certain except change – that nothing, including love, but also including pain, can last forever, and that this is life's greatest sadness as well as its greatest comfort.
But it's certainly true that while you can deeply admire books two and three, it's only the first one that you fall in love with. As you near the end of the three novels, you are desperately hoping that Gibbon will throw you something to hang on to at the finish, some hint of the ‘cool kindness’ he talks about elsewhere. But you know he's too good to be kind at the expense of authenticity. The very end of Chris's story is like Scotland itself – bleak but not cruel, sad and beautiful. I'm pretty sure this trilogy is a masterpiece.
(Jan 2013)
But she saw herself then in her long green skirt, long under the knee, and her hair wound in its great fair plaits about her head, and her high cheek-bones that caught the light and her mouth that was well enough, her figure was better still; and she knew for one wild passing moment herself both frightened and sorry she should be a woman, she'd never dream things again, she'd live them, the days of dreaming were by; and maybe they had been the best….
The language the novel is told in seemed so surprising to me at first that for a long time it simply didn't remind me of anyone. The narrative voice is a synthetic kind of Scottish English, in which the cadences and vocabulary of Scots are constantly bubbling under the surface. Often the English words only make sense if you take them to be codewords standing in for their Scots cognates, such as the way ‘brave’ is used to represent the Scots word ‘braw’. At other times, especially in the dazzling opening sections of the book, there is a generous larding of terms that may have some readers south of the border, or overseas, grinning in bewilderment (if, like me, you enjoy that sort of thing):
Ellison had begun to think himself a gey man in Kinraddie, and maybe one of the gentry. But the bothy billies, the ploughmen and the orra men of the Mains, they'd never a care for gentry except to mock them and on the eve of Ellison's wedding they took him as he was going into his house and took off his breeks and tarred his dowp and the soles of his feet […] and at the term-time he had them sacked, the whole jing-bang of them, so sore affronted had he been.
The result is a language that – despite its being a kind of construction of Gibbon's – struck me as utterly authentic: I believe everything he says. It also allows for some subtle effects in the later books as the narrative voice becomes more fragmented and less idiosyncratically Scottish. What's more, that inherent textual tension between Englishness and Scottishness reflects a key point of the book – that Chris herself is constantly torn between what she thinks of as her ‘Scottish’ self, who loves the land and its people, and her ‘English’ self, who wants to get away from there and learn to speak ‘properly’. (This is a false dichotomy many in Scotland may recognise even today.)
two Chrises there were that fought for her heart and tormented her. You hated the land and the coarse speak of the folk and learning was brave and fine one day; and the next you'd waken with the peewits crying across the hills, deep and deep, crying in the heart of you and the smell of the earth in your face, almost you'd cry for that, the beauty of it and the sweetness of the Scottish land and skies.
You can see here the interesting narrative technique of switching to the second-person, which happens frequently throughout all the books – a ‘you’ that is sometimes Chris, sometimes a vague townsperson, always drawing the reader deep inside the emotions of the novel. Here's another example, from Cloud Howe, during a virtuoso depiction of a town fête.
The teas were all finished and Melvin had opened up one of the tents for the selling of drams, folk took a bit dander up to the counter, had a dram, and spoke of the Show and looked out – at the board, the gloaming was green on the hills, purple on the acre-wide blow of heather. There was a little wind coming down, blowing in the hot, red faces of the dancers, you finished up your dram and felt fair kittled up; and went out and made for the board like a hare, damn't! you might be old, but you still could dance, you hoped the mistress had already gone home.
You might already detect the dominant tone creeping in under these passages: bittersweet, nostalgic, somewhat disillusioned. This mood darkens across the trilogy into something you could eventually fairly call bleak. But in the first book, when Chris is still young, the bleakness is just a part of Scotland's beauty; and it's perfectly evoked with many accomplished descriptive passages.
…it came on Chris how strange was the sadness of Scotland's singing, made for the sadness of the land and the sky in dark autumn evenings, the crying of men and women of the land who had seen their lives and loves sink away in the years, things wept for beside the sheep-buchts, remembered at night and in twilight. The gladness and kindness had passed, lived and forgotten, it was Scotland of the mist and rain and the crying sea that made the songs – And Chae cried Let's have another dance, then, it's nearly a quarter to twelve, we must all be off soon as midnight chaps.
There are parts of Sunset Song that had me almost open-mouthed with admiration, long passages which can't be quoted because their power comes from a cumulative brilliance, pages and pages which left me scribbling uncharacteristically superlative notes in my paperback: WOW! – how did he do this? – Is there ANYTHING to match this? and so on. The wedding scene was one such; another was the eventual story of what happened to Ewan in France. It's also often very funny – much funnier than I've made it sound in this review.
It's a little unfair in some ways that the second and third books in the trilogy have been overshadowed by the first. They are sadder, and the scope is less focused, but in their own way I thought they were equally fascinating and well done. More to the point, Sunset Song depends for its power on the fact that we are reading about the last throes of a particular way of life, and it's essential to Gibbon's project that he sees that through and describes exactly what comes after. To me, the first book is strong precisely because it is followed by books which detail Chris's move to a town and then a city, so that we feel the nostalgia for her country upbringing just as she does. Similarly, the urban interplay and Socialist parables of the last book only work because they come after such a naturalistic evocation of traditional Scottish country life.
Cloud Howe and Grey Granite are increasingly political, and some reviewers have even criticised Gibbon for being somehow ‘taken in’ by Socialism, but I don't recognise that at all. Sure, the writing shows a deep sympathy with the workers – as it damn well should – but there is no sentimentality here. Socialism, like religion, is dismissed as just another ideology, and if this trilogy is anything, it's unideological. The overriding message is rather that nothing at all is certain except change – that nothing, including love, but also including pain, can last forever, and that this is life's greatest sadness as well as its greatest comfort.
But it's certainly true that while you can deeply admire books two and three, it's only the first one that you fall in love with. As you near the end of the three novels, you are desperately hoping that Gibbon will throw you something to hang on to at the finish, some hint of the ‘cool kindness’ he talks about elsewhere. But you know he's too good to be kind at the expense of authenticity. The very end of Chris's story is like Scotland itself – bleak but not cruel, sad and beautiful. I'm pretty sure this trilogy is a masterpiece.
(Jan 2013)
January 17, 2015
Something I really liked about this trilogy is the way each book builds on the last. They're all related and the last two books do things they couldn't do if it hadn't been for the last book, but they're all different. The big theme of the trilogy is, on a personal level, gaining experience and what it does to you, and, more generally, the inevitability of change.
Sunset Song, the first novel, is a bildungsroman, really. Chris Guthrie is the teenage daughter of a crofter in 1911 Scotland. She's torn between identifying as the "English" Chris, who finds reality in the pages of books and wants to be a teacher and as the "Scottish" Chris whose self is always, inescapably, tied up with the land. A big theme of the trilogy is how ephemeral people are compared to the land, which almost negates time. In this first book characters occasionally catch glimpses of figures from another time. In later books there's a character that's into archaeology, which speaks of the same need to find the people who are gone in the landscape which is shared with those living. Chris becomes a sexual being, gets married and has a baby. Then WWI happens. It's nothing much at first, but it changes everything forever. This book is the seeing out of a way of life. Chris's experiences here are synthesise the archetypal and the personal. I felt it was one of those books that has been done many times but, not least because it was written before it had been done so often, almost fools you into feeling like it's a first time. Which is how that archetypal/personal experience thing should work. The writing style reminded me of Esther Waters by George Moore, though only in the sense that that novel seemed poised between the Victorians and modernism. This has that same sense of new suffusing the old, and of something preparing to take flight and change into something else. People seem to like this first book the best. It has the most joy and lyricism and sense of timelessness, and the war, though it destroys what the book is about, gives it a good sense of narrative. It has an ending.
The other two books are about what happens after the end. They expand outwards from the small community of Kinraddie where Sunset Song is set. In Cloud Howe Chris marries again and moves to Segget, a larger community. Her husband is the minister and this is a difficult position for both him and Chris, as it places them a little outside their class and community. Robert is an idealist, where Chris is a realist, though her realism is not everyone's. There is a sense of desperate need for positive change in this book. The central paradox of the trilogy is that this is seen as a doomed mission but one it is vital to embark on. Or at least, Chris's husband and son find it so. Chris is the real grown-up of the trilogy, able to face reality without placebos like religion and politics. This could be a bit of a tiresome stereotype, shutting women out from the important things while, as consolation prize, suggesting that they're the more mature for this exclusion. Chris isn't a boring grown-up to the more interesting men, though. We enter into both mindsets but Chris is the centre. This book is where I decided that I loved the trilogy, because Gibbon is committed. He wants a solution but he doesn't pretend there is one. The biggest flaw in the trilogy is the presentation of the political ignorance and callousness of the majority. It's too two-dimensional. In another book it would be a big problem for me but it's surrounded by enough that's real.
In Grey Granite Gibbon moves Chris and her son Ewan to a city and really goes for the political stuff. Ewan is not unlikeable but chillingly distant from everyday emotional concerns. When he becomes a Communist it's a way of becoming human for him, in a way, as he finally identifies as one of everyone else, but we soon see that he's just as distant as ever really. The flaws of social reform and political ideals are clear here. With Ewan's quest for justice and equality we have a sense of passion for something even he knows is hopeless. His politics are, apparently, the author's, but one doesn't feel these can have provided Gibbon with much consolation. Chris has lost her ability to invest in anyone romantically, to feel really close to anyone. To experience others is important but ultimately one is alone. In a way her life is over in this book, but in another way it's about how life goes on even when your life is over. There is no real end.
I think this is a book you have to be willing to commit to despite its flaws. Otherwise it would probably seem torrid. But I felt like the author committed to it and that meant a lot. This trilogy creates an impressive sense of progressive experience that comes from that commitment.
Sunset Song, the first novel, is a bildungsroman, really. Chris Guthrie is the teenage daughter of a crofter in 1911 Scotland. She's torn between identifying as the "English" Chris, who finds reality in the pages of books and wants to be a teacher and as the "Scottish" Chris whose self is always, inescapably, tied up with the land. A big theme of the trilogy is how ephemeral people are compared to the land, which almost negates time. In this first book characters occasionally catch glimpses of figures from another time. In later books there's a character that's into archaeology, which speaks of the same need to find the people who are gone in the landscape which is shared with those living. Chris becomes a sexual being, gets married and has a baby. Then WWI happens. It's nothing much at first, but it changes everything forever. This book is the seeing out of a way of life. Chris's experiences here are synthesise the archetypal and the personal. I felt it was one of those books that has been done many times but, not least because it was written before it had been done so often, almost fools you into feeling like it's a first time. Which is how that archetypal/personal experience thing should work. The writing style reminded me of Esther Waters by George Moore, though only in the sense that that novel seemed poised between the Victorians and modernism. This has that same sense of new suffusing the old, and of something preparing to take flight and change into something else. People seem to like this first book the best. It has the most joy and lyricism and sense of timelessness, and the war, though it destroys what the book is about, gives it a good sense of narrative. It has an ending.
The other two books are about what happens after the end. They expand outwards from the small community of Kinraddie where Sunset Song is set. In Cloud Howe Chris marries again and moves to Segget, a larger community. Her husband is the minister and this is a difficult position for both him and Chris, as it places them a little outside their class and community. Robert is an idealist, where Chris is a realist, though her realism is not everyone's. There is a sense of desperate need for positive change in this book. The central paradox of the trilogy is that this is seen as a doomed mission but one it is vital to embark on. Or at least, Chris's husband and son find it so. Chris is the real grown-up of the trilogy, able to face reality without placebos like religion and politics. This could be a bit of a tiresome stereotype, shutting women out from the important things while, as consolation prize, suggesting that they're the more mature for this exclusion. Chris isn't a boring grown-up to the more interesting men, though. We enter into both mindsets but Chris is the centre. This book is where I decided that I loved the trilogy, because Gibbon is committed. He wants a solution but he doesn't pretend there is one. The biggest flaw in the trilogy is the presentation of the political ignorance and callousness of the majority. It's too two-dimensional. In another book it would be a big problem for me but it's surrounded by enough that's real.
In Grey Granite Gibbon moves Chris and her son Ewan to a city and really goes for the political stuff. Ewan is not unlikeable but chillingly distant from everyday emotional concerns. When he becomes a Communist it's a way of becoming human for him, in a way, as he finally identifies as one of everyone else, but we soon see that he's just as distant as ever really. The flaws of social reform and political ideals are clear here. With Ewan's quest for justice and equality we have a sense of passion for something even he knows is hopeless. His politics are, apparently, the author's, but one doesn't feel these can have provided Gibbon with much consolation. Chris has lost her ability to invest in anyone romantically, to feel really close to anyone. To experience others is important but ultimately one is alone. In a way her life is over in this book, but in another way it's about how life goes on even when your life is over. There is no real end.
I think this is a book you have to be willing to commit to despite its flaws. Otherwise it would probably seem torrid. But I felt like the author committed to it and that meant a lot. This trilogy creates an impressive sense of progressive experience that comes from that commitment.
September 14, 2013
I've read the trilogy three times I think (rather appropriately), seen the stage play, listened to a musical setting of it in Glasgow Cathedral, seen the BBC version of it from the 1970s (now available on dvd at last hallelujah). I guess that constitutes me being a fan of the book! What's the attraction? The humour, the dialect, the evocation of the time and place, before the "Great" War changed the pace of life forever. The first couple of times I tried to read the book, the first part of Sunset Song bogged me down a little, with the history of the area, etc. but persevere if you find if hard going, it's ultimately a very rewarding trilogy, A Scots Quair is truly a Scots classic!
P.S. I'd recommend his short stories too, especially "Smeddum"!
P.S. I'd recommend his short stories too, especially "Smeddum"!
January 2, 2013
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.
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.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 30, 2012
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.
Want to read
November 5, 2020OpenRoadMedia 199
February 7, 2011
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.
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.
February 8, 2009
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 son of her first marriage. However, the changes brought to rural Scotland continue to mark the lives of villagers. In the third book, Grey Granite, Chris and her son have moved to the city, a dis-spirited, unforgiving hole. Here they confront the final changes in 1930's era Scotland as industrialization and communist idealism collide. I have loved these books for years and go back to them to read and read regularly.
April 1, 2013
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 and very Scottish, a novel written with the whole world in view but from a Scottish perspective. If you should read any story please try and read the warm intellectual mind concerned with the direction of human civilization.
December 30, 2011
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.
January 16, 2008
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.
October 11, 2018
Grassic Gibbon's prose is lyrical. His eye for detail in description, whether in landscape or in characters' thoughts, is remarkable.
September 15, 2024
This book traveled with me to Scotland and it didn't disappoint. The story follows Christine's childhood through womanhood, motherhood, and widowhood. The joys and sorrows that encompass life are well-developed in this trilogy. The dynamics of community and regrets press in on Chris's story.
I enjoyed books one and two. I felt book three lacked the intensity that drove the story. I would not call this a fun read, but a serious read. I found the descriptive writing of the scenery pleasing, especially getting the opportunity to see Scotland's landscape and rainy weather.
I couldn't tell you if this book was for or against religion, there was this constant back and forth. The writing by Gibbon uses the wording of a true Scot, which takes a little getting used to if you don't hear Scots talk daily, but it doesn't hold back the story, if anything it enhances the experience.
I enjoyed books one and two. I felt book three lacked the intensity that drove the story. I would not call this a fun read, but a serious read. I found the descriptive writing of the scenery pleasing, especially getting the opportunity to see Scotland's landscape and rainy weather.
I couldn't tell you if this book was for or against religion, there was this constant back and forth. The writing by Gibbon uses the wording of a true Scot, which takes a little getting used to if you don't hear Scots talk daily, but it doesn't hold back the story, if anything it enhances the experience.
January 22, 2022
Being Canadian, I'd never heard about this book when I bought it while in Scotland. apparently it's a huge classic there. Written in the 1930s I expected an 'old fashioned' kind of book, but it is quite revolutionary. It's 'Scottish brogue" was lovely, although I frequently checked in on the glossary for meaning of the words....but I could 'hear' that in my head and felt like I was in the Highlands again (one of the most beautiful places on earth). As most have written, my favourite was the 1st part of the trilogy "Sunset Song"....so if you can't handle reading the whole thing....do read this one. I found the last book "Grey Granite" a bit heavy handed in its political views....but those were the times. I thought Sunset Song rated 5 stars, Cloud Howe 4 stars and Grey Granite 3 stars.....so rounded it out to 4.
October 28, 2015
Gibbon's trilogy traces the life of Chris Guthrie from girlhood to death at the beginning of the twentieth century. Sunset Song follows her from childhood moving to a farm in the Mearns through adolescence to marriage and the First World War, Cloud Howe her life as a minister's wife in the small town of Seggat, and Grey Granite her later years running a boarding house in the industrial east coast city of Duncairn.
Life is never easy for Chris, whether labouring a subsistence living on the land, enduring childbirth and gossips, or facing the existential terror of the finity of her life and those around her. Gibbon writes in English but with Mearns doric dialect and this particular edition came with a very useful dictionary. This dialect has more subtlety than English when it comes to describing the differences in land use, farming practices and the shifts in weather particular to this part of the world.
Gibbon engages with a socialist agenda throughout, though this is never forced. We are shown how wretched life is for tenant farmers, for factory workers and for women. This comes through most powerfully in Grey Granite when Chris' son engages with workers' rights, but is always there.
For me, Sunset Song is the most successful book because it has Chris as its core. Chris is there in the latter two books but is not the pivot that she is in the first book. Sunset Song has a lyrical sad quality which shows the beauty of this part of Scotland but never romanticises the hardship or the people. I read this first as an 18 year old student and am now 40, before I did not understand and appreciate the life of Chris. Sunset Song is often dismissed as kailyard sentimentalism, it isn't
Life is never easy for Chris, whether labouring a subsistence living on the land, enduring childbirth and gossips, or facing the existential terror of the finity of her life and those around her. Gibbon writes in English but with Mearns doric dialect and this particular edition came with a very useful dictionary. This dialect has more subtlety than English when it comes to describing the differences in land use, farming practices and the shifts in weather particular to this part of the world.
Gibbon engages with a socialist agenda throughout, though this is never forced. We are shown how wretched life is for tenant farmers, for factory workers and for women. This comes through most powerfully in Grey Granite when Chris' son engages with workers' rights, but is always there.
For me, Sunset Song is the most successful book because it has Chris as its core. Chris is there in the latter two books but is not the pivot that she is in the first book. Sunset Song has a lyrical sad quality which shows the beauty of this part of Scotland but never romanticises the hardship or the people. I read this first as an 18 year old student and am now 40, before I did not understand and appreciate the life of Chris. Sunset Song is often dismissed as kailyard sentimentalism, it isn't
January 25, 2014
In some ways I feel it does a dis-service to these books by reviewing them together for each part of the trilogy is brilliant.
A Scots Quair is actually three books, Sunset Song, Cloud Howe and Grey Granite, that tell the story of Chris Guthrie, a young woman in the North East of Scotland, moving from the hard, rural life of her adolescence to adulthood and marriage.
It's a wonderful depiction of rural Scotland at the beginning of the 20th century and describes the development of the working class of Scotland up to, through and beyond the horrors of the 14-18 War.
There's such a strong socialist feel to much of the books and this is hardly surprising for Gibbon (real name James Leslie Mitchell) was a committed Marxist. But for all the politics and social commentary in the books, Chris is simply a wonderful heroine.
I read her first as a young man, not long after I read Tess of the D'Urbervilles, which I loved. For me Chris Guthrie was, and remains in my head, the Scottish Tess! Although she's not as lost or as vulnerable as Tess she still made me feel that all I'd want to do would be to wrap her up and protect her!
Generally the first book, Sunset Song, has long been regarded as a classic of Scottish literature but for me Cloud Howe was the best of the three - and together they are wonderous!
I chose A Scots Quair as one of ten books that represent my country Scotland. If you would like to read about the others you can find them at http://theonlywayisreading.com/2013/1...
A Scots Quair is actually three books, Sunset Song, Cloud Howe and Grey Granite, that tell the story of Chris Guthrie, a young woman in the North East of Scotland, moving from the hard, rural life of her adolescence to adulthood and marriage.
It's a wonderful depiction of rural Scotland at the beginning of the 20th century and describes the development of the working class of Scotland up to, through and beyond the horrors of the 14-18 War.
There's such a strong socialist feel to much of the books and this is hardly surprising for Gibbon (real name James Leslie Mitchell) was a committed Marxist. But for all the politics and social commentary in the books, Chris is simply a wonderful heroine.
I read her first as a young man, not long after I read Tess of the D'Urbervilles, which I loved. For me Chris Guthrie was, and remains in my head, the Scottish Tess! Although she's not as lost or as vulnerable as Tess she still made me feel that all I'd want to do would be to wrap her up and protect her!
Generally the first book, Sunset Song, has long been regarded as a classic of Scottish literature but for me Cloud Howe was the best of the three - and together they are wonderous!
I chose A Scots Quair as one of ten books that represent my country Scotland. If you would like to read about the others you can find them at http://theonlywayisreading.com/2013/1...
December 7, 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 fluoride), and Zircon (a tetragonal mineral, of which jacinth and jargon are varieties - jacinth is reddish orange, and jargoon brilliant and colorless).
Tom Wintringham (editor of Left Review), he termed this last book as "the best novel written this side the Channel since Hardy stopped writing".
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 fluoride), and Zircon (a tetragonal mineral, of which jacinth and jargon are varieties - jacinth is reddish orange, and jargoon brilliant and colorless).
Tom Wintringham (editor of Left Review), he termed this last book as "the best novel written this side the Channel since Hardy stopped writing".
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November 22, 2010This 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 will move the actual book to Alex, let him try it.
Update 11/22. I created a new shelf called rejected. This book is the sole occupant but there are other deserving candidates. I can't figure out a way to make it neither read, to-read, or currently reading, so it will have to remain as 'read'. I did read it . . . a few pages.
Anyway, I put it down. Now I have to decide what shelf to move it to. I think I will move the actual book to Alex, let him try it.
Update 11/22. I created a new shelf called rejected. This book is the sole occupant but there are other deserving candidates. I can't figure out a way to make it neither read, to-read, or currently reading, so it will have to remain as 'read'. I did read it . . . a few pages.
May 25, 2016
My absolute favourite of all time - Chrissie's story is a social history of Scotland, description of the Howe, the red tilled earth of the fields in the Mearns and how Chrissie's story progresses through a time of great change in Scotland.
Lasting memory is of her kindness to conscentious objector, the image of him sitting on doorstep forlorn and wondering if his convictions right. The changing of the landscape as trees are chopped down for war effort, changing farming forever in the area. I loved living in this area, thought of Chrissy on my own wedding day when I got married on the church on the hill, with fields of wheat, sea beyond it and the boat suspended from the inside of the roof in the church.
Chrissy defied convention and can easily say Grassic Gibbon gave me strength and conviction through what was effectively my first feminist reading.
Lasting memory is of her kindness to conscentious objector, the image of him sitting on doorstep forlorn and wondering if his convictions right. The changing of the landscape as trees are chopped down for war effort, changing farming forever in the area. I loved living in this area, thought of Chrissy on my own wedding day when I got married on the church on the hill, with fields of wheat, sea beyond it and the boat suspended from the inside of the roof in the church.
Chrissy defied convention and can easily say Grassic Gibbon gave me strength and conviction through what was effectively my first feminist reading.
October 10, 2018
This has been a hard book to read for many reasons. The first one is obvious, Scots. I thought I knew what was I getting into, but it was harder than expected. Sometimes, the glossary is not as helpful as I would have liked it to be. Words in Scots, or “chiefly Scottish” as the dictionary says would not appear in there. The list of old “chiefly British” could have also been more extensive. Lastly, I don’t know fuck all about agricultural practices, in English, Scots, or Galician, and that forced me to check the dictionary way more than usual.
It is not only the language that was complicated, the structure was also less than straightforward. Chapters are long enough to be called seasons, and the smaller sections in the book are separate from each other by a mere double space. This, added to the intensity of the text, encourages a very close and slow read I was not always up for. This might seem minor in “Sunset’s Song”, but it becomes rather important in ”Grey Granite”, where a new section would deliberately start with a pronoun and you would be left wondering for several lines “who is he referring too?” While it made it difficult and sometimes confusing, I also see it as an effective way of taking the story away from Chris, Ewan, or whomever LGG is referring to at the moment, and giving it to the Mearns.
That is probably the best and most surprising part of the whole volume. I thought the trilogy was about Chris. It is, particularly the first book, but as the story progresses she loses presence, not so much in favor of Ewan as part of a multigenerational saga, but also in favor of other “minor” characters to give us a fuller experience of the transition from the rural, and more solitary world to the crowded urban one. Still, LGG excels at getting inside his characters and more than once I was on the verge of tears because of their misfortunes, as well as happily smiling seen their more enduring characteristics and enraged when they were at their worse. And I laugh. Probably not as much as the average contemporary, but terribly funny bits intersperse among the more dramatic parts. The way politics gets added to the lot is also subtle and incremental, and if by the end of the book I do not know where LGG stood has more to do with my ignorance of Scottish politics and its Labor movement than to any possible limitation he might have had. Or maybe he knew perfectly well how difficult is to find the right balance between being a complacent moderate and a useless radical and left it there. Or is Ewan’s brutal breakup with Ellen indicative of how far to go for the right cause?
I will read it again, not only because it seems to be my wife’s favorite book, but because it probably gets better the more familiar you are with the story, the History, and the characters. And because I would not mind crying again to the loss of old Scotland (dammed LGG! And I knew it was coming!)
It is not only the language that was complicated, the structure was also less than straightforward. Chapters are long enough to be called seasons, and the smaller sections in the book are separate from each other by a mere double space. This, added to the intensity of the text, encourages a very close and slow read I was not always up for. This might seem minor in “Sunset’s Song”, but it becomes rather important in ”Grey Granite”, where a new section would deliberately start with a pronoun and you would be left wondering for several lines “who is he referring too?” While it made it difficult and sometimes confusing, I also see it as an effective way of taking the story away from Chris, Ewan, or whomever LGG is referring to at the moment, and giving it to the Mearns.
That is probably the best and most surprising part of the whole volume. I thought the trilogy was about Chris. It is, particularly the first book, but as the story progresses she loses presence, not so much in favor of Ewan as part of a multigenerational saga, but also in favor of other “minor” characters to give us a fuller experience of the transition from the rural, and more solitary world to the crowded urban one. Still, LGG excels at getting inside his characters and more than once I was on the verge of tears because of their misfortunes, as well as happily smiling seen their more enduring characteristics and enraged when they were at their worse. And I laugh. Probably not as much as the average contemporary, but terribly funny bits intersperse among the more dramatic parts. The way politics gets added to the lot is also subtle and incremental, and if by the end of the book I do not know where LGG stood has more to do with my ignorance of Scottish politics and its Labor movement than to any possible limitation he might have had. Or maybe he knew perfectly well how difficult is to find the right balance between being a complacent moderate and a useless radical and left it there. Or is Ewan’s brutal breakup with Ellen indicative of how far to go for the right cause?
I will read it again, not only because it seems to be my wife’s favorite book, but because it probably gets better the more familiar you are with the story, the History, and the characters. And because I would not mind crying again to the loss of old Scotland (dammed LGG! And I knew it was coming!)
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August 30, 2021Best novel(trilogy) I have read in many years. It has entered my personal pantheon of the greats in literature. I'm in no position to make comparison with other great 20th century Scottish novels but I accept the judgement of my better read reviewers that this trilogy is "the best Scotish novel/s of the 20th century. The character of Chris Guthrie stays in my mind mind I keep returning to her life and struggles every day since finishing the book. What better recommendation that a book has become aiive and a part of one's life. Everyone should read this trilogy, IMHO, even more so if you have any Scots ancestry. It should be essential reading for all those far-flugh emigrants and descendants of emigrants, just as it has already become an essential part of the Scottish school systems literature curriculum.
July 30, 2022
This trilogy is stunningly beautiful. The first novel, Sunset Song, is one of the best books I've ever read; extraordinarily powerful, moving, beautifully written, and deeply profound. Breathtaking. Over and over again it just takes you by the collar and shakes you hard.
The other two novels, Cloud Howe and Grey Granite, are merely great, unequal to Sunset Song but few novels are.
In Grey Granite, the story comes dangerously close to being smothered by ideology, but then is redeemed beautifully at the end, finishing the journey of the protagonist and gently making clear the author's ultimate, and exceedingly valuable, message.
All three books are liberally peppered with so much Scots that one (this one, at least) must sound the text out in his head. It makes for slow reading, but a better appreciation of the lyricism and beauty of the writing.
The other two novels, Cloud Howe and Grey Granite, are merely great, unequal to Sunset Song but few novels are.
In Grey Granite, the story comes dangerously close to being smothered by ideology, but then is redeemed beautifully at the end, finishing the journey of the protagonist and gently making clear the author's ultimate, and exceedingly valuable, message.
All three books are liberally peppered with so much Scots that one (this one, at least) must sound the text out in his head. It makes for slow reading, but a better appreciation of the lyricism and beauty of the writing.
December 30, 2018
This is not an easy book to read. It's written in a kind of pseudo-Scots. But once you get your 'ear' in so to speak, it is the most beautiful read. It tells the story of Chris Guthrie, the daughter of a crofter who later marries a farm labourer. It's broken into the seasons of the year, so we follow her from Winter to Spring to Summer and Autumn (I have to admit this may be wrong it's about 20 years since I last read it).
Chris has a desperately hard life but when she marries she finds happiness with her husband and they have a baby. Unfortunately war breaks out and her husband is sent away to fight in France.
There's no more evocative telling of the Scottish crofting life and it is a Scottish classic for a good reason.
Chris has a desperately hard life but when she marries she finds happiness with her husband and they have a baby. Unfortunately war breaks out and her husband is sent away to fight in France.
There's no more evocative telling of the Scottish crofting life and it is a Scottish classic for a good reason.
July 27, 2023
It took some time to get into (and not just because of the print being small in the edition I was reading) but when I did, I couldn't stop reading. The book really takes you on a journey, together with the main character, and I didn't really want it to end (although it was a beautiful end). It gives great insight into the time and place it's set in, fictive villages and towns in rural Scotland, beginning at the early 20th C and moving up past the Great War and beyond, with the war effort, industrialisation and changing attitudes towards religion as part of the back story, mostly seen through the eyes of one woman. I highly recommend it!
October 25, 2020
Overall I enjoyed this and I found the language a really interesting mix of English and Scots. I would definitely say that Summer Song is the highlight though. Not so much in subject matter, as I think if anything the issues that each book handles get progressively more interesting as the books progress, but the time taken for them gets reduced. I suppose what makes these books so fun though is all the perspective that gets left out, enough for you to know that there's an entire living body of work hiding just behind the page that you will never be privy to
April 12, 2021
Hugely impressed but disappointed I found this wonderful work so late in life. But I shall re-read it.
For anybody reading this comment who has not started to read A Scots Quair I would say get a good edition with glossary and introduction (i.e ed. Ian Campbell), and definitely ignore the fairly common judgement that Cloud Howe and Grey Granite are not the equal of Sunset Song. It would be sad to act on that judgement and ignore the evolution of Chris Guthrie over time and in different social settings, as well as the fascinating development of Gibbon's mode of writing.
For anybody reading this comment who has not started to read A Scots Quair I would say get a good edition with glossary and introduction (i.e ed. Ian Campbell), and definitely ignore the fairly common judgement that Cloud Howe and Grey Granite are not the equal of Sunset Song. It would be sad to act on that judgement and ignore the evolution of Chris Guthrie over time and in different social settings, as well as the fascinating development of Gibbon's mode of writing.
July 7, 2020
I read this purely as a novel, written for entertainment and celebration, and ignored the 'what it's all about' introduction, as I do on all books (unless on finishing I need to know more).
And thoroughly enjoyed it, almost. So obviously a paean to Scotland's past, its countryside and its people, told via the life of a woman named Chris, it skipped along vividly, the only negative bit, for me, the politics towards the end.
I do regret I didn't read it decades earlier.
And thoroughly enjoyed it, almost. So obviously a paean to Scotland's past, its countryside and its people, told via the life of a woman named Chris, it skipped along vividly, the only negative bit, for me, the politics towards the end.
I do regret I didn't read it decades earlier.
August 8, 2019
Absorbing read offering insight into the life of Scottish villagers from the Great War to the Communist movement in the 1920s. Author’s unique style of writing tends to run-on sentences that become paragraphs and ever changing points of view. Worth the effort for its window into the past.
February 2, 2017
Remember loving this trilogy when I read it at school. Happy to have found a copy so I can delve into it once again.
June 25, 2018
I'd read Sunset Song already, and wanted to read the rest, so this was a good way to do that. I loved all of them, but was left with an abiding sense of melancholy at the end.
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