352. Sunset Song

Sunset Song
Lewis Grassic Gibbon
1932
Around 200 pages

I've been trying to avoid the news recently so I don't get sucked into a vortex of sadness, but the List is really working on pushing me off that ledge. Maybe I'll just lean into it and commit to an ice cream and pajama lifestyle.

Chris Guthrie has a tough life. She lives in rural Scotland with an abusive father, a clinically depressed mother, and too many siblings to feed. She spends most of the novel suffering, and we suffer with her.

I love the descriptions of the Scottish countryside, even if there was a mournful note to the whole thing. I appreciated the female perspective, even if Lewis couldn't resist inserting a World War I soldier in there who attempted to out-trauma Chris. 

Still, not the most memorable novel, it felt like a B-side Thomas Hardy story. 

RATING: ***--

Interesting Facts:

First in the trilogy A Scot's Quair, with the other two being Cloud Howe and Grey Granite.

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