Product Description

Chris Guthrie, torn between her love of the land and her desire to escape the narrow horizons of a peasant culture, is the thread that links these three works. The stories interweave the personal joys and sorrows of Chris's life with the greater historical and political events of the time.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #60005 in Books
• Published on: 1995-03-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 670 pages

Review
'The rhythms of the prose are incantatory, musical...' --Guardian

Review
'Combines gritty realism with gripping melodrama.'

Customer Reviews

The most beautiful book i have ever read.
It is impossible not to be carried to 'Kinraddie', in the beautiful descriptive language that Gibbon uses to capture the beauty of what could be many areas in Scotland. This book has everything, the joy and sorrow of the 3 ages of chris guthrie..from child to young lover and mother, to widowed mother of a young man in a revolutionary new scotland, the terrible loss of the great war, the pain of childbirth and the tale of the land which chris loves. Of all the times i have read this book, i have never managed to do so without drowning the pages in tears. Simply the most wonderful book i have ever read.

Majestic, magnificent, mighty sweep through Scotland 20th C
A trilogy focussing on the life of Chris Geddes from the mearns of Kincardine in the 1st world war to trade unionism in Dundee. Gibbon tells a story that is alive with an affirmation of life. Joy and heartbreak with a background of social history. A real woman - feminist before feminism.

Beautiful, unsentimental, a satisfying read

Sunset Song is elegaic, describing a way of farming life soon to disappear with the outbreak of the first world war. The characters are vivid and real, no whimsy here - life is hard, but hopeful and sometimes happy and the people are tough and worthy of respect. Chris is the main character and she and Long Rob were my favourites, but its an ensemble piece. Thomas Hardy's "In Time of the Breaking of Nations" kept coming to mind because of the contrast between great events and perpetual cycles, although the continuity that Hardy predicts turns out not to be true.

Cloud Howe and Grey Granite continue to follow Chris' life and that of her son Ewan and I found them equally as good. I don't want to give further details of what happens for fear of spoiling the story, but I felt compelled to find out what happened to the characters and read straight on from Sunset Song. Gibbons is a wonderful writer, both in his characterisation and descriptions. I felt as a 1960s Southerner that the author had conveyed to me a real feeling of what it was like to live in the (fictional) Mearns in the early 20th century.

This trilogy is not an "easy" read, but amply repays any initial effort of becoming familiar with the dialect words (there aren't that many and it impressed my Scottish friends that I knew them:-)

I love these books and highly recommend them.