![]() ![]() ![]() The rural way of life that the story’s characters have always known is increasingly challenged by advancing technology and the impact of war. Kinraddie, the book’s fictional setting, represents a world in transition. She marries a young farmer, Ewan Tavendale, who signs up to join the army when war breaks out. After her troubled mother and abusive father die and her brother emigrates, Chris considers leaving the farm to work as a teacher but finds herself tethered to the land. The novel’s bold protagonist, Chris Guthrie, comes from a dysfunctional farming family. Crushing poverty, the toil of earning a living from the land, the sternness of religion and the oppressive reality of life for women in particular – these themes provide the context for the lives whose stories unfold in the book. Set in the north-east of Scotland around the outbreak of the First World War, Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s novel is unsparing in its harsh realism. Sunset Song tells a beautiful, though often heartbreaking, story. ![]()
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