The first in a trilogy called A Scots Quair, Scottish author Lewis Gibbon’s novel Sunset Song (1932) follows a young Scot Chris Guthrie who is raised in a dysfunctional farming family in Kinraddie, a fictitious estate in Scotland’s northeast, Kincardineshire. Guthrie has a difficult life, punctuated by the larger geopolitical crisis of World War I. Gibbon develops his own mythology for this fictional Scottish place, embedding its events and characters in an allegory that points to Scotland’s crisis of identity during the war and postwar periods. For its deep characterization of the social and emotional texture of Scotland, the novel has become a household staple for Scots and has been entered into both the Scottish and Anglophone canons. The novel begins in Kinraddie before the onset of World War I. Its first section, “Prelude,” contextualizes Kinraddie in its history and local mythology. Its earliest foundations date back to the feudalistic twelfth century known as the High Middle Ages, before its modern state border was defined. Back then, the rapid development of a Scottish national identity led to the founding of a number of estates including Kinraddie, though the rest of Europe tended to view the country as a brutal, disorganized, and even primal place. Once Scotland began to be recognized as a real country of Europe, a boundary was established that closely matches the boundaries of Scotland in Guthrie’s time. Gibbon describes a key battle that took place between Scottish national William Wallace and the English army. Other critical junctures in Kinraddie’s development were the French Revolution and English Reformation, both of which catapulted Europe further into the modern era. At the end of the Prelude, Gibbon gives an overview of Kinraddie and its people in winter 1911, when the story begins. The rest of the book consists of four chapters and the “Epilude.” In the first chapter, Guthrie’s mother, Jean learns that she is expecting twins. This places an additional financial burden on their family, which already has four kids. To make room for the new additions, Guthrie’s father John decides to lease out a farm in Kinraddie known as Blawearie. Jean is upset at the prospect of giving birth to two more babies, but her husband exercises his power as a man and husband to refuse her request to have an abortion. Without any civil rights related to bodily choice in Scotland, Jean accedes to his power. When they move to Kinraddie, the two younger children go to Aberdeen to be raised by an uncle and aunt. Guthrie enrolls at a nearby college. Her burgeoning love for academia falls into conflict with her nostalgia for the freedom and exposure to nature provided by her rural upbringing. In the second chapter, the twins are still babies. Learning she is pregnant again, Jean falls into despair. Unable to get help from her society, she goes insane, killing the twins and then herself. After the tragedy, Guthrie drops out of school, going to work on her family’s homestead. Her eldest brother, Will, absconds with a girl from Kinraddie, marries her, and moves permanently to Argentina. John is enraged by what he perceives as his son’s betrayal of their family, which causes him to suffer a stroke. For the rest of his life, he is paralyzed. While bedridden, he makes sexual advances to Guthrie, who refuses. In the third chapter, John dies. Guthrie comes into possession of his wealth and property. Despite an urge to sell the land and move on from it, she resolves to take care of Blawearie as her own project in homage to her roots. She falls in love with a working-class man Ewan Tavendale. Soon, he proposes to her, and she accepts with little hesitation. Not long after their marriage, she learns that she is pregnant. In the fourth chapter, Ewan and Guthrie have their baby. Guthrie names him Ewan in honor of her husband. By this time, World War I starts to rage between Germany and Britain. The elder Ewan volunteers to serve in the Scottish militia. Traumatized during his military training, he suffers a crisis of personality emotionally abusing Guthrie. When it comes time for him to leave for combat, Guthrie refuses contact with him. She regrets it after he leaves, and is devastated when she receives a message informing her that Ewan has died in combat. The Epilude describes the aftermath of World War I and how it affected Kinraddie. The church’s new minister announces that the estate will erect a statue in honor of its people who died in combat. Guthrie recovers from her deep depression over Ewan’s death, renewing her will to press on and create a better life for her and young Ewan. She falls in love with the reverend. At the end of the novel, she goes to the Standing Stones near her home for the erection ceremony of the War Memorial, and as the sun sets, remarks that her life has forever changed. Sunset Song blends what ostensibly seems to be a classic romantic plot with the unique anxieties of World War I, creating a new kind of story altogether. In Gibbon’s story, any notion of romantic fruition is suspended. In its place is a continuous natural renewal, akin to birth and death that drives its protagonist through new flavors of social and emotional consciousness.

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Lewis Grassic Gibbon

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