I found Gibbon rather a shrewd writer, very understanding of his young character, and her tumultuous thoughts and feelings. By the end of the novel, I sadly had no real interest in any of the characters, or where their lives would lead them. As I thought I would enjoy this novel far more than I did, I have decided that continuing with the series isn’t the best idea. Sunset Song is the first volume of the Scots Quair trilogy. We are pulled immediately into Chris’ world we learn of what she sees, thinks, and feels. We then move onto the main section of narrative, which is set during the first period of drought for thirty years the landscape is ‘fair blistering with heat’.

Here, Gibbon sets up the geography of the local area, and introduces several characters. The Prelude opens with a sweeping and detailed history of the town of Kinraddie, which is written in a style reminiscent of a Medieval legend. The novel is split into three parts – ‘Prelude’, ‘The Song’, and ‘Epilude’. It was not mother only that died with the twins, something died in your heart and went down to lie with her in Kinraddie kirkyard – the child in your heart died then, the bairn that believed the hills were made for its play… Thar died, and the Chris of the books and the dreams died with it, or you folded them up in their paper of tissue and laid them away by the dark, quiet corpse that was your childhood.’ Her mother’s death particularly alters things for Chris, including the way in which she views the landscape: ‘… the black damp went out of the sunshine and the world went on, the white faces and whispering ceased from the pit, you’d never be the same again, but the world went on and you went with it. The advent of the First World War also causes change, with those around her joining up to fight. Her father is violent – ‘… it was coarse, coarse land, wet, raw, and red clay, father’s temper grew worse the more he saw of it’ – and her elder brother, Will, becomes the only point of constancy in her life. Her mother commits suicide, after poisoning Chris’ baby twin siblings, and soon afterwards, two of her brothers are adopted by a childless aunt and uncle.

Soon after they move, the omniscient narrator of the piece observes: ‘Something was happening to mother, things were happening to all of them, nothing ever stayed the same except maybe this weather…’. She is at the mercy of the land, and also of the people around her. The naive and rather innocent Chris can feel that things are going wrong, but cannot quite understand their gravity. Soon after they arrive, her family begins to disintegrate. Sunset Song focuses on a young Scottish woman named Chris Guthrie, a bright student who has to put her ambition on hold when her family moves from Aberdeenshire to a rather remote farming community.

Sunset song by lewis grassic gibbon