Sunset Song

I was that weirdo who adored every book I had to read in high school. Now, I’m that weirdo who seeks out the books teenagers in other countries have to read. And that’s how I discovered why Sunset Song was voted "the best Scottish book of all time.” Set in a northeastern hamlet called Kinraddie during the first two decades of the 20th century, it recounts the coming-of-age of bookish crofter’s daughter Chris Guthrie, and the passing-of-an-era of unmechanized farming. While Gibbon doesn’t write in dialect, he seeds his lilting prose with an abundance of Scots words so that you feel like you’re learning a new language by living among its speakers. (I checked my work with the glossary at the back.) Being significantly older than a teenager, I thought I knew how the story would unspool, but it twisted and untwisted my heart right up to the end. Sunset Song is rooted in a specific time and place but yields timeless, universal enjoyment.