Hardly what one expects an early 20 th century Aberdeenshire farmer’s daughter to look like, I fear. She is a former model – tall, fragile and delicate looking. Agyness Deyn does her best in the role, and her accent is reasonably authentic sounding at points – enough to fool a non-Scottish audience anyway, I would think – but she is totally miscast. Imagine my disappointment then to discover that Davies had decided to cast an English actress in the central role of Chris Guthrie – a 32-year-old English actress at that, to play a character who is a child at the start of the book and no more than mid-20s at its end.

Kevin Guthrie and Agyness Deyn as Ewan Tavendale and Chris Guthrie The book is widely recognised as one of the most significant Scottish novels of the 20 th century, and I hoped the film would faithfully reproduce the themes and culture that give it that deserved status. It’s the most disappointing adaptation I have seen on either big or small screen for years. I wish I was about to rave about the film, but I’m not – well, not in a good way, at least. The book is a profound and deeply moving portrait of a rural society caught up in the changes brought about through modernisation and war at the beginning of the 20 th century, culminating with the characters coming together to face an uncertain future in a world that will never be the same again. It has been one of the films I’ve been most eager to see since I fell in love with the book all over again when I recently re-read it after a gap of many years. Read more The first in Gibbon's classic trilogy A Scot's Quair, Sunset Song is infused with local vernacular, and innovatively blends Scots and English in an intense description of Scottish life in the early twentieth century.Apparently the making of the film has been a long-term labour of love for director Terence Davies, his first attempt to bring it to the screen having failed in 2003. But as the First World War begins, everything changes, and the young men leave Scotland for battle. Soon she is alone, and for the first time can choose how to spend her life. When her mother, broken by repeated childbirths, takes her own life and poisons her two youngest children, Chris is left with her father to run the farm on her own. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ALI SMITH Young Chris Guthrie lives a brutal life in the harsh landscape of northern Scotland, torn between her passion for the land, duty to her family and her love of books. Num Pages: 336 pages, Illustrations, maps.

Young Chris Guthrie lives a brutal life in the harsh landscape of northern Scotland, torn between her passion for the land, duty to her family and her love of books.

Sunset song novel