I had absolutely no idea about the existence of this charming wee Scot's flower of a novel, but my word it has left me fair stammy-gastered!Sunset Song starts with a lyrical and rambunctious prelude in near enough untrammeled Aberdeenshire dialect, tracing the history of the area from the 12th century "when gryphons and suchlike beasts still roamed the Scots countryside", onto the local career of William Wallace, the Jacobites and on up to the eccentric families that populate the farms and mills of the time the story is is set, the first decades of the 19th century. The Guthrie clan arrive at Blawearie farm in Kinraddie from Aberdeen when father loses the tenancy of the farm there after insulting a member of the gentry. Kinraddie is a wild country of lochs and cairns, of "dark howes and hills" with some ancient pagan Standing Stones on a summit. Chris Guthrie is the heroine who starts off wanting education, has to give that up in the face of tragedy and ends up wanting nothing but the land around her.Lewis Grassic Gibbon finds a storyteller's delight in the full range of rustic life, from the antics of a local "daftie" (simpleton) who goes on the rampage, bothering the women and eating soap before before caught and committed to an asylum, to the snobbery of those common folk "trying to hold in with gentry", for there can be greater folly, and on through all the births, deaths, marriages and funerals that mend and mar a life.When Chris Guthrie's mother kills herself and her young twins and "something died in your heart and went down with her to lie in Kinraddie kirkyard--the child in your heart died then, the bairn that believed the hills were made for its play, every road set fair with its warning posts, hands ready to snatch you back from the brink of danger when the play grew over-rough."Yet when her father dies there is only relief, for Gibbon never shies from the closeted disgraces of pastoral life and her mother's death he was always "whispering and whispering at her, the harvest in his blood, whispering her to come to him, they'd done it in Old Testament times, whispering You're my flesh and blood, I can do with you what I will, come to me, Chris, do you hear?"Left to herself amongst the gossip and conservative traditions of the Kinraddie community Chris finds love, hate, anger, acceptance and eventually the life she wants. As she is once told "Oh, Chris, my lass, there are better things than your books or studies or loving or bedding, there's the countryside your own, you its, in the days when you're neither bairn nor woman."Sunset Song is sung in the purest traditions of oral storytelling by Gibbon, with the events of the field and the heart all told in the liveliest vernacular, frequently bookended by " So that was.." before the next tale unfolded. Never before have a finished a novel and wished to hear the audiobook version!I feel I should give all those who have not read the book a more substantial peek at the narrative delights it contains, so here is an extended passage where Gibbon describes a brawl: "So, being a fell impatient man, and skilly with his hands, he took Sam Gourlay a clout in the lug that couped him down in the stour and then before you could wink he and Ewan were at it, ding-dong, like a pair of tinks, all round the Upperhill close; and Upprums came running in his leggings, the creature, fair scandalized, but he got a shove in the guts that couped him right down in the greip where once his son Jock had been so mischieved; and that was the end of his interfering".
Attention Novelists!Test 1Have you written a dreary middlebrow novel set in a part of India, the Orient, or a sundrenched third-world nation? Is your novel about postcolonial struggles and skirmishes faced by impoverished nations during a specific period in history? Does your novel dwell upon the emotional turmoil at the root of a persecuted community, and does it focus on a stoic native whose trials are shown at their most heartbreaking and humourless? Well done! Your novel will be popular with middle-aged divorcées and airheaded beach readers who want the covers of their novels to reflect the places in which they skim them. Your novel probably looks like this:Test 2Have you written a shameless, tearjerking piece of third-world issuetainment after a moving trip to Nigeria in an attempt to “spread the message” to readers around the world about suffering, poverty, and the first-world’s indifference to famine, drought and oppression? Was your intention originally to donate all profits to charities, but now that you’ve written the novel, you need the money to pay for your mortgage and car insurance? Is your book told from a child’s point of view in insultingly simple prose that approximates how a Nigerian would speak, since you didn’t attempt to transcribe dialect during your trip, you simply made concerned faces and wept in your hotel room? Well done! Your novel will be bought at airports and remain unread for months until the reader has the guts to skim a few pages before he puts it down for being too depressing. Your novel probably looks like this:Test 3Have you written a sentimental, nostalgic novel romanticising the past in a dreary Irish, Scottish or Northern English ex-mining town? Is your novel stuffed with lazily specific references to things that happened in the past so people think you are “evoking” a certain place in time wonderfully, rather than simply ransacking your own bland childhood cynically for profit? Does your novel have extremely tame romantic scenes and po-faced attempts to depict the bigotry and racism at the heart of these backward communities in the form of hokey “literary” metaphors and stand-alone paragraph-sentences? Well done! Your novel will sell like spangles to the over-sixties market, desperate to redeem their miserable childhoods by misremembering every bad thing that happened to them as a good thing that didn’t happen to them. Your novel looks like:
What do You think about Sunset Song (1988)?
Tough book to review. So much I could say, but I don't want to blither. The language in this book is gorgeous. For someone like myself, so far removed from this story in both time and place, it's a revelation. (I could read and re-read the glossary alone, just for the fun of it.)Loved it.Clamjamfried = choked, caked, plsteredDish-clout = dishcloth, ineffectual manFusionless = lacklustre, tired, insipid, feebleGawpus = idiotGleg-vexed = bothered by insectsJookery-packery = inappropriate behaviourStammygaster = shock, surpriseJust to show you a few. And even one for my Gypsy theme, although not a nice one - won't even put it here, come to think.Thanks to Bettie and Overbylass for the recommendations.
—Sylvester
The lilt of the language is what intrigued me with this book. Though written somewhat in English, the Scots language and manner of speaking is peppered throughout the extremely poetic passages. It was like reading a romance as a long poem by an extremely sensitive and intelligent writer. The author's descriptions are so palpable you are placed right there among these people, feeling with them the very wind pushing at their backs. You taste the oatcakes and jam, you breathe the the seasons, you feel as though you are one among the heroes, the gossips, the lovers, the swindlers, the newly arrived, the dying.
—Gayle
This book (and the remaining 2 in the trilogy 'A Scot's Quair') is regarded as a classic of Scottish literature, so I was expecting something good and I really wasn't disappointed. The story has the feel of an epic and is set in the early 1900's on a tough windswept farm near Aberdeen. The central character, Chris Guthrie, is a young girl who is destined for more, due to her intelligence, nurtured at school but those assets disregarded by most of the local community due to their dedication in working the land. Chris is a wonderful character and I really grew to like her. She was courageous and very human. Without giving away too much of the plot, her life takes some unexpected twists and turns along the way to adulthood and the advent of the Great War takes its toll on the villagers and on Chris herself. The mix of English and Scots phrases works well as it is blended well, quite subtlety, and eventually just seems to gather momentum until you are engrossed. Wee quote here:"So that was Chris and her reading and schooling, two Chrisses 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."The ending of this novel was very moving and the descriptions of the landscape and its timelessness were very poetic, lyrical and emotive. I am now looking forward to following on with the next two parts, Cloud Howe and Grey Granite, very much.
—Angie
