Novel
Sunset Song
Lewis Grassic Gibbon · 1932
Synopsis
Kinraddie, a parish of farms in the north-east of Scotland, before 1914. Chris Guthrie is fifteen, she is good at school and her teacher wants to send her to study; her father, a hard and pious farmer, wants her at home. She is torn between two selves she calls the English Chris, the one of books, and the Scottish Chris, the one of the land. Her mother dies, her brother leaves for Canada, her father falls ill. Chris inherits the farm, marries a neighbour, and war is declared.
Context
The work appeared in 1932, the first part of a trilogy that follows the same woman from the farm to the village and then to the city. Its prose moves from English to the Scots of the Mearns without warning and without a glossary: its author claimed to write English as a Scot speaks it. The book was long banned for immorality before becoming a classic, and it was not until the nineties that it appeared in French, under its original title.
Who it is for
Three hundred pages in English mixed with Scots, with no glossary and no concessions. It is best to read the first pages aloud to hear what the eye does not understand.
Prizes and reception
Voted Scotland's favourite Scottish novel by the public in a national poll in 2005, and on the school curriculum ever since.