A Tale of ScottishRural Life

Lewis GrassicGibbon's Sunset Song(1932)was voted"the best Scottish novel of alltime"by Scottish's reading public in 2005.Once considered shocking for itsfrank

description ofaspects of the lives of Scotland'spoor rural farmers,it has been adapted for stage,film,TV and radio in recentdecades.

The novel is set onthe fictional estate of Kinr Addie,in the farming country of the Scottishnorthwest in the years up to and beyond World War I.At its heart is the storyof

Chris,who is bothpart of the community and a little outside it.

Grassic Gibbon givesus the most detailed and intimate account of the life of his heroine.We watchher grow through a childhood dominated by her cruel but hard-working

father;experiencetragedy(her mother's suicide and murder of her twin children);and learn abouther feelings as she grows into woman. We see her marry,lose her

husband,then marryagain.Chris has seemed so convincing a figure to some female readers that theycannot believe that she is the creation of a man.

But it would bemisleading to suggest that this book is just about Chris.It is truly a novel ofa place and its people.Its opening section tells of Kinr Addie's longhistory,in a

language thatimitates the place's changing patterns of speech and writing.

The story itself isamazingly full of characters and incidents.It is told from Chris' point of viewbut also from that of the gossiping community,a community where everybody

knows everybodyelse's business and nothing is ever forgotten.

Sunset Song has asocial theme too. It is concerned with what Grassic Gibbon perceives as thedestruction of traditional Scottish rural life first by modernization and thenby

World War I. Gibbon tried hard to show how certain characters resistthe war. Despite this,the war takes the young men away,a number of them totheir deaths. In particular,it

takes away Chris'husband,Evan Tavendale.The war finally kills Evan,but not in the way his widowtold. In fact,the Germans aren't responsible for his death,but his own

side.He is shotbecause he is said to have run away from a battle.

If the novel isabout the end of one way of life it also looks ahead.It is a Sunset Song but isconcerned too with the new Kinr Addie,indeed of the new European world.Grassic

Gibbon went on topublish two other novels about the place that continue its story.What is SunsetSong mainly about?

A.The First WorldWar.

B.The beauty of thesunset.

C.The new Europeanworld.

D.The lives of ruralScottish farmers.