This series chronicles the turbulent life of a woman from the rugged northeast coast of Scotland in the early 20th century. She navigates personal trials, societal shifts, and the harsh realities of rural existence. The narratives are imbued with strong characters, poetic language, and a profound understanding of human resilience against adversity.
Sunset Song is the first and most celebrated of Grassic Gibbon's great trilogy, A Scot's Quair. It provides a powerful description of the first two decades of the century through the evocation of change and the lyrical intensity of its prose. It is hard to find any other Scottish novel of the last century which has received wider acclaim and better epitomises the feelings of a nation.
Source: Product Description Introduced by Tom Crawford. The compelling saga of Chris Guthrie is continued in this, the middle volume of Grassic Gibbon's great trilogy A Scots Quair. The scene has moved to the small community of Segget, where, after Ewan's death in the First World War, Chris has come to live with her second husband, Robert Colquhoun, an idealistic and liberal minister. Cloud Howe offers a brilliant evocation of small town life set against post-war economic hardship and the General Strike of 1926. Chris loses her baby and has to fight for a sense of her own identity in a world where only the land-and Chris herself-seem to endure with honour. Robert Colquhoun, wracked by war-ruined lungs, has to wrestle with his ideals and a spiritual crisis which will eventually kill him. Grassic Gibbon was already living in England when he wrote his great work. The incomparable artistry of Cloud Howe makes his self-imposed exile all the more poignant
Chris Guthrie and her son, Ewan, have come to the industrial town of Duncairn, where life is as hard as the granite of the buildings all around them. These are the Depression years of the 1930s, and Chris is far from the fields of her youth in Sunset Song. In a society of factory owners, shopkeepers, policemen, petty clerks and industrial labourers, 'Chris Caledonia' must make her living as bets she can by working in Ma Cleghorn's boarding house. Ewan finds employment in a steel foundry and tries to lead a peaceful strike against the manufacture of armaments. In the face of violence and police brutality, his socialist idealism is forged into something harder and fiercer as he becomes a communist activist ready to sacrifice himself, his girlfriend and even the truth itself, for the cause. Grey Granite is the last and grimmest volume of the Scots Quair trilogy. Chris Guthrie is one of the great characters in Scottish Literature and no reader of Sunset Song and Cloud Howe should miss this last rich chapter in her tale.
A Scots Quair is revolutionary—innovative in its form, deft and humorous in its use of the Scots language, courageous in its characterization and politics. Central to the trilogy is Chris Guthrie, one of the most remarkable female characters in modern literature. In Sunset Song, Gibbon's finest achievement, the reader follows Chris through her girlhood in a tight-knit Scottish farming community: the seasons, the weddings, the funerals, the grind of work, the gossip. As the Great War takes its toll, machines replace the old way of life. Cloud Howe and Grey Granite take Chris from her rural homeland to life in an industrial Scotland and the desperate years of the Depression. The trilogy as a whole is a major achievement, a picture of a society undergoing traumatic and far-reaching transformation. Always readable, never sentimental, A Scots Quair is one of the most important works of modern Scottish literature.
Set in early 20th century Scotland, this trilogy follows the life of Chris Guthrie, offering a vivid portrayal of her struggles and triumphs. The three novels—Sunset Song, Cloud Howe, and Grey Granite—explore themes of identity, landscape, and social change. Celebrated for its rich language, the first novel is considered a classic, while a comprehensive glossary of the Scots dialect enhances the reading experience, making the cultural context accessible to all readers.