Sunset Song

I don't even know where to start on this one. Look, if you've got a tin ear, short attention span, are raised on video games, and don't want challenges to your own experience, curl up to a Stephen King and a Bud on the vinyl lounge chair on the patio and be happy. But for heaven's sake don't crack these pages. You'll just suck air into the R-complex, and you'll have to purge it. On the other hand, if you want to do the rad in lingo, strap yourself into another more advanced mind, Mr. Gibbon's for instance, and struggle up through the depths where most of us crab around sideways mouthing syllables, and claw your way up into the sublime. To the place where language and music merge with life. The place of tragedy and joy. To the world not your own. The evocation of a lost time and place and culture. A lost quality of light. Savagery. Humility. Humor. Perseverance. The coming of age of a young woman. Danger. This. This work of high art. The gift of another.

Several years ago, I saw a PBS "Masterpiece Theatre" adaptation of SUNSET SONG. It was excellent, and prompted me to go out & quickly purchase a copy of this novel. I have since re-read it at least once a year. The story of the life of a young girl, Chris Guthrie, in turn-of-the-century Scotland to the end of WWI, it is a page-turner, filled with vivid characterizations; disturbing in some parts, filled with tenderness in others. A truly compelling, beautiful novel that memorializes another place and time, vividly. Cannot recommend this novel highly enough. My understanding is that this the first novel in a trilogy called "Scots Quair" but I have never read the other two novels. SUNSET SONG can easily stand alone, in my opinion; I don't want to take Chris any farther than she's brought here. I felt her character and her life were fully developed (heartbreakingly so) by this novel alone.