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Sunsett Song
Sunsett Song
Lewis Grassic Gibbon | 2015 | Fiction & Poetry
8
8.3 (3 Ratings)
Book Rating
The landscape comes alive and you are trasported back in itme (0 more)
there are better things than your books or studies or loving or bedding, there’s the countryside your own […] in the days when you’re neither bairn nor woman.’ I
Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, published in 1932 became the ‘cream of the crop’ in a poll organised by The Scottish Book Trust last year. Not only was it voted as Scotland’s favourite novel, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon described it as ‘timeless’ in an interview with the BBC, ‘ it said something about the history of the country I grew up in and it resonated with me very strongly as a young Scottish woman.’ I have to say that I am in agreement with the First Minister. Sunset Song is a beautifully written aesthetic novel that follows the life and internal conflict of the protagonist Chris Guthrie. By presenting Chris as a kind of cultural double, Gibbon is showing the reader the problems that result in Chris’s separation from the community and her parents conflicting interests regarding her upbringing. Chris’ father, hoping to enhance his daughter’s natural intelligence, is aware of the negative impact that the community might have on her progression, ‘Stick to your lessons and let’s see you make a name for yourself, you’ve no time for friends.’ John Guthrie, a progressive man, regards Chris’s peers as ‘servant queans.’ Whilst this may read as a cultural attack on the lower classes, John Guthrie, is simply reacting to his own working class conditions as a farmer. His motivation is to raise Chris out of the environment that he himself has struggled in and to give her better opportunities. Chris refers to her intelligent self as ‘English’ and identifies a cultural otherness between herself and those of her community. Chris’ mother Jean, on the other hand, has a view of the world that is from a much older time. Before marriage she was a free spirit, ‘there are better things than your books or studies or loving or bedding, there’s the countryside your own […] in the days when you’re neither bairn nor woman.’ It was Gibbon’s intention to create a heteroglossic view of education between Chris’ parents in order to create a protagonist whose future is a conflict between progression and an older unstructured way of life. It is through Chris’s thoughts, however, that her true self can be found. Her English self forms an escape, a place that is simpler, refined and an improvement on how she perceives Scottish culture as a result of her class, ‘the furrows went criss and cross, you wanted this and you wanted that, books and the fineness of them no more than empty gabble sometimes, and then sharn and the snapping that sickened you and drove you back to books.’ It is clear that Gibbon wanted to show the reader that Scottish culture does evaporate with progression. Culture lives in all of us, in the people, the land and in the struggles that we have faced and will face in the future. Chris Guthrie is the perfect example of hope, for a future which is rich in learning while still embracing her Scottish roots, I guess a future we can all identify with.
  
Braveheart (1995)
Braveheart (1995)
1995 | Drama, History, War
Action (2 more)
Swordplay
Freedom
Historically inaccurate (1 more)
Gibson's accent
Hold... Hold... HOOOLLLLDDDD!
Contains spoilers, click to show
As a story this is a great film, unfortunately people who have limited or no knowledge of Scottish History take this film as a portrayal of all things Scottish around this time.

So to save some confusion:
Longshanks died well after Wallace
The French Princess did not exist
The Bruce wasn't a traitor
Wallace wasn't the leader until after Stirling Bridge
Woad hadn't been worn for about 1000 years
It didn't start with the death of his wife

So now I have this off my chest, to the film itself. It is an epic and one of the films that you must see before you die, just like Shawshank, High Noon and Inside Out.

The story of the one group persecuting another, and a man coming back to his village after spending time abroad learning taking revenge on the death of his secret wife cumulating in open rebellion and war is a common story told many times in cinema history. What makes this is the scenery and the cinematography.

The fight scenes show the brutality and barbarity of war in this era in history. This does it expertly!

If you want something more historically accurate look at Rob Roy with Liam Neeson, if you want a chill film this is the one for you.
  
The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins
The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins
Irvine Welsh | 2014 | Contemporary, Fiction & Poetry
3
3.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Not a pleasant read
Having recently read and enjoyed Trainspotting, I decided to give this book a go as I was intrigued to see how Welsh writes when it’s not in Scottish. Sadly I think I prefer the Scottish!

This is not a pleasant read, in more ways than one. The main character Lucy is a horrendous person, which is intentional but it doesn’t make for a nice read. There’s nothing redeemable about her at all and the longer the book goes on, the more repulsed you become by her behaviour. She’s not meant to be massively likeable, but I really didn’t enjoy reading a book where the main character is that disgusting. It’s a shame as the actual plot itself is quite decent and has a lot of interesting aspects and developments. The problem though is the characters and the fact that this is far too explicit and crude, it’s entirely unnecessary. The writing style also grates a lot in this. It seemed to work for Trainspotting but in this it just seems inappropriate - why Welsh can’t write conversation and paragraphs with proper punctuation and paragraphs I’ll never know. And finally the ending in this is just laughable. After such a horrific story the ending seems so out of place and so undeserving for such characters. If you want to read Irvine Welsh, read Trainspotting. Don’t bother with this.