Grey Granite

A Scots Quair #3

by Lewis Grassic Gibbon

Lewis Grassic Gibbon's most famous work and indeed his greatest achievement is A Scots Quair. The Quair (meaning book), is a trilogy which was published over three years as Sunset Song (1932), Cloud Howe (1933), and Grey Granite (1934). Following the life of its heroine Chris Guthrie, the three novels take the reader from the Great War to the growing communism of the 1920s and are innovative in their style, language and thought.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Scotland, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction

220 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1934

About the author

Lewis Grassic Gibbon was the pen name of the Scottish author James Leslie Mitchell.

Born in Auchterless and raised in Arbuthnott, then in Kincardineshire, Mitchell started working as a journalist for the Aberdeen Journal and the Scottish Farmer at age 16. In 1919 he joined the Royal Army Service Corps and served in Iran, India and Egypt before enlisting in the Royal Air Force in 1920. In the RAF he worked as a clerk and spent some time in the Middle East. He married Rebecca Middleton in 1925, with whom he settled in Welwyn Garden City. He began writing full-time in 1929. Mitchell wrote numerous books and shorter works under both his real name and nom de plume before his early death in 1935 of peritonitis brought on by a perforated ulcer.

Reviews

[Carlos · Rating 1 out of 5]

So, after a few months, I have finally finished the Gibbon's trilogy. The previous 2 booked I could not rate them with more than one star, and this is unfortunately not the exception. The issue was the same as in the previous 2 books: Unclear characters, super dense and complicated language, the story told in a not-good way and it is very easy to get lost. The only good thing I can say about all this trilogy is that it's about how Scotland was during the Industrial Revolution.
And really, I have not much to comment about this other than it took me ages to finish it, since that is my golden rule. I am glad I finished everything so I can move on. As I mentioned in the first part of this trilogy, it is really a pity that a book about the Scottish history was bad, at least from my very amateur point of view.

[Leah · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wonder what happened to Lewis Grassic Gibbon? Sunset Song is undoubtedly great, Cloud Howe is mediocre and dull, and this one is dreadful. Did he only write the other two to cash in on the success of the first? Or did fame go to his head so that he began to despise the "ordinary" people he showed so much sympathy to in Sunset Song? I don't know and in truth I'm so off him now I can't be bothered making the effort to find out.

The language which feels authentic and underplayed in Sunset Song has now become a kind of parody of Scots, full of words this archaic Scot has never heard anyone use, even in my childhood when the older adults I knew would have been of the age of these characters. I'm not saying they're not real words, simply that I never met anyone who used them, neither "common" people nor educated ones. The rhythms have gone from sounding natural to sounding completely fake and overdone, as if he's read a review admiring his rhythms in the past and now keeps reminding himself to stick an "and" in every three words to try to produce a lilt.

And as for the characters, wouldn't it be nice if just one of them had one redeeming quality? Nobody likes Chris and her son Ewan because they're "stuck-up" and think they're better than everyone else. I have to agree. And all the non-stuck-up ones are vile, mean and spiteful and little better than beasts, with a constant emphasis on how they have sex, how often they have sex, when they have sex, where they have sex. Chris thinks about sex almost every time she thinks about anything. It's very wearing.

I've had enough, of this and of Gibbon. Abandoned at 25%, with a strong recommendation to read Sunset Song and ignore the rest of the trilogy. That way you may not grow to dislike Gibbon and his tedious characters as much as I have...

[Elizabeth (Alaska) · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I got to the end of the 2nd in the Trilogy, Cloud Howe, I was hoping this last installment would focus on Chris' son, Ewan Tavendale. It did, but not in the way I'd hoped. Or, frankly, it undoubtedly wasn't the direction that Ewan thought his life was headed. Instead of college, Chris and Ewan moved from Segget to the fictional town of Duncairn where Ewan had secured an apprenticeship. Chris managed to invest her few pounds in a partnership for a boarding house.

But then things went downhill. Ewan got tangled up in socialist/communist politics. I wanted to like Ewan, but both of these types of government are anathema to me. I just hated to read this. Mind you, I never thought of setting it aside. Please note that I thought this entire series good enough that I wanted a different future for both Chris and Ewan. The characterizations were that real to me. Neither I nor they got that hoped-for future.

I'm more than happy to have read and finished (!) this trilogy. The 2nd and 3rd installments were nowhere near as good as Sunset Song. But I'd started down the road and wanted to see its end. I did get a bonus: I play a word game on another site and these 3 books provided a wealth of 6-letter words for me to play. Like Santa, I have a list and keep checking it twice! This is just 3-stars, and probably sits toward the lower section of that group.

[Caro · Rating 2 out of 5]

Me ha gustado, aunque no tanto como “Canción del ocaso” ya con “Valle de nubes” me hizo sentirme algo alejada de la maravillosa primera entrega de la trilogía,
“Granito gris” es una huida hacia adelante, una nueva ciudad, una nueva vida, nuevos personajes junto con Chris y Ewan que van buscando algo mejor.
Le doy dos estrellas ya que a veces y tal y como está escrito me costaba centrarme en quién hablaba, quién respondía, no hay diálogos propiamente dichos y eso para mí es un hándicap.
La historia es buena, algo introspectiva y un reflejo del momento económico, social, político de la época.

[Ana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Me siento tentada de darle más puntuación por la nostalgia de terminar la trilogía, pero tres es lo justo. El libro más flojo de los tres. En su conjunto, una experiencia preciosa. Muy recomendado.

[Jeff Koeppen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fittingly, I finished Grey Granite, the last book in the Scots Quair, on my final night in Scotland. A couple days prior, my wife and I traveled to northeastern Scotland to visit the Lewis Grassic Gibbon Center and the locations in the immediate area where Sunset Song was set and some of Grey Granite was set. I have a picture of myself and the book in front of the slab of grey granite they displayed outside the Center. The author weaves "grey granite" in to the book often to describe the weather, landscape, an characters' personalities.

Grey Granite was really good but had a different feel that the two prior Scots Quair books. The book is set in the early 1930s and picks up where Cloud Howe left off. The setting is moved to a larger city (fictional Scottish city of Duncairn) and the focus switched away from mostly Chris Guthrie to Chris and her son, Ewan, who was is now in his 20s and has established himself as a spokesperson for worker's rights and becomes and important member of the local communist group.

Like is predecessors, this book is full of fun old-timey Scottish colloquialisms and witty and biting humor. Chris Guthrie continues her run as the strong, no-nonsense heroine of the series. Grey Granite does take a bit of a darker and more violent turn that the others, mostly in the form of police brutality against strikers during workers' rights demonstrations and their incarceration.

The trilogy wraps in a very melancholy and satisfactory manner. Grey Granite was published in 1934, one year before the author died at the young age of 33.

[Ainhoa Verdú · Rating 2 out of 5]

Un final de trilogia bastant fluix que no m'ha agradat. No és gens comparable al primer volum que em va encantar i et transporta a Escòcia amb les seves descripcions. "Granito gris" es centra molt en temes que no m'interessen gaire i és per això que aquest l'he trobat avorrit, lent i sense gràcia ni cap tipus de màgia com els anteriors. Com a volum que tanca una trilogia es queda ben curt.

[maria ✿ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read Sunset Song and stop there. The other books are not worth it. Nothing will live up to the beauty of Sunset Song…

This book, on its own, is good. However, with the context of the rest of the series it lacks correlation and diverges too much

[LadyCalico · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book more than Cloud Howe but way less than Sunset Song. Chris's story is the thing of real interest in the book, but the garbage about Ewan's stupid politics not so much. So sad he turned out to be such a nasty little twerp. I must agree with those who describe this book as grim.

[Ginebra Lavao Lizcano · Rating 2 out of 5]

'Mm-okay' book. Man at pub already warned me that it was the worst of the trilogy. These are difficult books if unacquainted with Scottish argot and culture. Some sections were awful pretty and the descriptions were simplistic and relatable. I think that if I keep on learning about Alba and get closer to it I shall one day enjoy these a great deal more.

[Astrid · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, like the others of the trilogy, haunted me a lot.
Thinking of and about it when I was not reading; this night even - understanding how much loneliness Gibbon pictures, and how realistic it seems.
It seems a scarily contemporary book. And visionary, too, seen as how he understands, in 1935, the meaning and threat of fascism, the gloomy future awaiting.
Gibbons also understands the meaning and consequences of trauma - admirably so, even, for that time. The trauma of the men having come back from war, the trauma of wives and children left without their fathers and partners. The trauma of young people facing social injustice, fighting against it, and being crippled (pschologically) by police violence.

It doesn't astonish me that the first book of the trilogy, "Sunset Song" is the most popular. It's the less gloomy of all the series; but I found the others as passionate, intense and well written as the first. What upsets me is the fact that so much was already known then about politics and lobbies, about trauma and the fights of the powerful against people, about human nature, too. And still, here we are - threatened by elites who won't change their ways despite of climate change, with a war that is changing our lives even if we're no participants (yet). Again.

Then it made me think a lot about human nature, which Gibbon pictures so well, and with a lot of humour also in the first two novels of the trilogy. It made me laugh a lot, also because he just cites peoples talk, in all it's intelligence (sometime) and insight and also in its absurdity and contradictions (other times).
This disapears in the third part. I ask myself if the author has become more pessimistic or just more realistic, as the economic situation has degraded, social conflicts become mure acute, and people lose their light-heartedness and optimism.

A lot of questions, and an author I will go on reading, and a trilogy I'll certainly reread some time.

[Veronica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I find it a bit strange that Canongate chose to illustrate all three volumes in this edition with a man's face on the cover, given that the trilogy is based on the life of Chris, a woman. That said, her son Ewan plays a much larger part in this one, the labour strife of the 1930s driving him towards Communist activism. It has to be said he's a much less attractive character than Chris. Especially in his romantic relationship. I still feel Sunset Song is the best of the trilogy. This one is a pretty grim read in which everything goes downhill, and I found the ending a bit of a disappointment -- after all she's been through, Chris deserves better than this.

I do think it's a great achievement though: one of those rare male writers who can convincingly explore female experience from the inside. Gibbon really takes you inside Chris and Ellen's heads, whereas you can never really figure out what's going on with Ewan. Just a random quote because I love his prose:

Neither friends nor scruples nor honour nor hope for the folk who took the workers' road; just life that sent tiredness leaping from the brain; that sent death and wealth and ease and comfort shivering away with a dirty smell, a residuum of slag that time scraped out through the bars of the whooming furnace of history --

I like to think of my mum reading this when she was young too: her burning desire for social justice is here.

[Stephen Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very impressive. This is the capstone for the Scots Quair trilogy and easily the best of the novels. Its power is remarkable, and it really brings to a head the movement of history that is started off in Sunset Song. If you only read one of the trilogy, read this one. But bear in mind that this one gains some of its power -- and the reading experience is enhanced a good deal -- by the first two.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about the whole of A Scots Quair is that the protagonist is a woman. The novels manage to capture not just the experience of Scotland at the transitional moment from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries, but also the specificities of a woman's experience of that time. The attention to the body, to the transactional nature of gender relations, to the social constraints placed upon women, to the ways they must work around a profoundly sexist culture, and the ways they find to advocate, support and tend to one another is to my knowledge unique in modernist fiction. Put these novels alongside anything by Woolf, Mansfield, Richardson, Barnes, Butts, or Bowen as representations of everyday life of women (related through form and style to the status of Scotland as a colonized space and producer of a 'minor' literature), and you have a suddenly much richer perspective.

Anyone interested in women, modernism, the everyday, and the nexus of those elements should read all three in this trilogy ASAP.

[Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moving the focus of the previous novels from the country to the town, adds an additional dimension to Gibbon's uniquely crafted prose. It is a novel of Communism, Socialism, factories, violence and town life; it does not have the immediate impact and beauty of Sunset Song, the best of the trilogy, but it is a fascinating and brilliant novel in its own right. Though Grey Granite keeps Gibbon's sense of humour intact, it is also a much darker and less spry novel than what came before.

[Neil MacDonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

The final book in the Scots Quair trilogy, Grey Granite, sees the Great Depression continue and Chris has moved to the city, helping run a boarding house.

With Ewan now a young man and serving an apprenticeship in the steel works, he assumes centre stage. A strange strong distant lad, perhaps today we’d call him a high functioning sociopath. When Ewan becomes embroiled in the class struggle, the cool detached boy changes:

“it seemed to Ewan in a sudden minute that he would never be himself again, he'd never be ought but a bit of them, the flush on a thin white mill-girl's face, the arm and hand and the downbent face of a keelie from the reek of the Gallowgate, the blood and bones and flesh of them all, their thoughts and their doubts and their loves were his, all that they thought and lived in were his. And that Ewan Tavendale that once had been, the cool boy with the haughty soul and cool hands, apart and alone, self reliant, self-centred, slipped away out of the room as he stared, slipped away and was lost from his life forever.”

He also falls in love with Ellen, a socialist teacher, but there is no doubt as to which of his passions is the more important.

Though Grey Granite, set in an industrial city, lacks the pastoral lyricism of Sunset Song, or even Cloud Howe, still it is the people, ranked in their classes, who make the tale. And Grassic Gibbon has done a good job of rendering the difference between the new proletariat and the old peasantry. Even the idiom is different—Bulgary, for example (“it’s snowing like Bulgary”).

But the main theme of the book Is the strike at the works and Ewan arrested and shamed by his torture at the hands of the police. “A hell of a thing to be history,” the Communist, Trease, tells him.

Yet, this final book of the trilogy is not about beliefs. That was the theme of the second book. Cloud Howe, where Chris sees all the beliefs of people as so many clouds. Here she sees the stone of Grey Granite and the semi-precious stones that form the chapter titles. Chris warns Ellen that Ewan, when he’s recovered, will “never be any lass’s lad”. And so it is. Ellen’s faith in Communism fades, replaced by a wanting of a little place of her own and maybe a car. Ewan remains obdurate, hard as stone, though now with what Chris perceives as a new coarseness. He, in turn, tells her she’s real. But when Ellen tells him she’s left the Party and you couldn’t have fun without money, he rejects her.

And the stone it is, of all things, that endures, the hard stone and the soil of the hills of her birth to which Chris retreats alone at the end. And there she senses the timelessness that has always been hers:

“Chris moved and sat with her knees handclasped, looking far on that world across the plain and the day that did not die there but went east, on and on, over all the world till the morning came, the unending morning somewhere on the world.”

[Kirsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nach dem Tod ihres zweiten Mannes hält Chris nichts mehr in dem kleinen Dorf Segget. Gemeinsam mit ihrem Sohn Ewan zieht sie nach Duncairn in der Nähe von Edinburgh. Dort lebt und arbeitet sie in einer kleinen Pension während Ewan eine Ausbildung macht. Aber die alte Heimat lässt sie nicht los. Ake Ogilvie, ein neuer Pensionsgast aus Segget, läßt die Erinnerung wieder aufleben.

Wieder einmal hatte Chris Pech, und wieder einmal bekam sie kein Mitleid, sondern Schadenfreude zu spüren. Ihr Mann Robert starb auf der Kanzel der kleinen Kirche, aber die Worte, die er zuletzt gepredigt hat, waren zu weltlich für die kleine Gemeinde. Chris hatte sich in Segget nie heimisch gefühlt. Ihre einzige Sorge gilt ihrem Sohn Ewan und seiner Zukunft. Deshalb geht sie dorthin, wo er ihrer Meinung nach eine Zukunft hat.

Aber auch in Duncairn hat sie es nicht leicht. Immer wieder werfen ihr die Leute vor, sie wäre arrogant und hielte sich für etwas Besseres. Diese Meinung kann ich nicht verstehen. Chris bleibt sich treu und hat ihre eigene Meinung, aber sie wirkt nicht arrogant auf mich. Sie redet nicht viel mit den Menschen, sondern nur wenn sie wirklich Vertrauen zu jemand gefasst hat. Aber das hat meiner Meinung nach nichts mit Arroganz zu tun, sondern nur mit dem Wunsch nach Ruhe.

Als die Menschen in Segget davon erfahren, dass die feine Dame aus dem Pfarrhaus in einer Pension arbeiten muss, ist die Schadenfreude natürlich wieder groß. Aber Chris kümmert das nicht. Ewan dagegen umso mehr. Er war der Sohn eines Bauern, dann der Steifsohn eines Pfarrers und dabei möchte er nur er selbst sein. Wie seine Mutter ist er intelligent und bleibt gerne für sich und wird wie sie für arrogant gehalten.

Chris und Ewan auf ihrem Weg zu beobachten, ist wie immer spannend. Egal, was ihr zustösst: Chris geht unbeirrt ihren Weg. Sie scheint größtenteils zufrieden zu sein, aber ob sie wirklich glücklich ist, wage ich zu bezweifeln. Zumindest scheint sie ihren Frieden gefunden zu haben.

[Malagonc · Rating 3 out of 5]

Con "Granito gris" se pone punto y final a la trilogía escocesa en la que Lewis Grassic Gibbon retrata perfectamente las primeras décadas del convulso Siglo XX en su país.
La protagonista, Chris, que pasó del bucólico campo de Kinraddie al pueblo de Segget, recala ahora en la fea, deprimida e industrial Duncairn, donde llega con su hijo Ewan dispuesta a ganarse una nueva oportunidad de vida tras la muerte de su marido Robert.
En esta ocasión, el autor decide abordar el problema de las protestas sindicales obreras que se produjeron en el periodo de entreguerras, en un mundo cada vez más polarizado que terminaría desembocando en la II Guerra Mundial. La historia discurre lenta con una narración algo trabada, en la que pasamos de personaje en personaje teniendo en ocasiones la sensación de no saber quién nos está hablando. Sin duda este es el punto que hace a esta novela la peor de la trilogía.
Pero por suerte, la historia mejora en las últimas páginas, poniendo un final redondo a una historia que deja al lector, o al menos a mí, con el corazón encogido.

[Libros Prestados · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excelente final para la Trilogía Escocesa que me ha encantado. El único problema que le veo es que Cris no es la protagonista, realmente. Estas novelas siempre han sido muy corales, pero creo que especialmente en esta el protagonismo de Cris se ve muy disminuido en favor de su hijo.

Ahora bien, la novela es súper actual y Lewis Grassic Gibbon tira con bala contra los tories, la Iglesia (anglicana), los empresarios, los padefos y contra los socialdemócratas (por perpetuadores de un sistema que perjudica a la clase trabajadora). ¿Es esta novela una oda al comunismo? No, ni mucho menos, pero sí es un canto en honor a la gente humilde que hace lo que puede.

[Sue Barbosa · Rating 4 out of 5]

The third of the “Scots Quair” trilogy, this novel finds Chris in her late 30s living in ‘Duncairn’ (a thinly disguised Aberdeen) during the desperate years of the 1920s Depression.

Her son, Ewan, becomes involved with trades unionism. He has a romance with a like-minded teacher but leaves her when her employer restricts her activism. He, like the town where he labours, is definitely forged of “grey granite”. The novel ends with Chris back in the Mearns as a tenant farmer in Kinraddie and I feel ends on a rather more optimistic note.

[Meghan · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5-5 stars - not quite as good as Sunset Song (but so few are!), but still had superb language, strong themes, and engaging characters.

[Catherine Jeffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

The final novel in the trilogy that tells the story of Chris. She is now widowed and her son Ewan is an adult. An absolute masterpiece of story telling and my favourite of the three novels.

[Rafael · Rating 1 out of 5]

aquí hay mucha paja modernista y eso solo merece la pena faulkner woolf y joyce si acaso

[Malvina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book 3 A Scots Quair (minor spoilers)
Although this book has the humour and poetry of the other two, it is a lot grimmer and fairly dark. It centres around life in the grimy industrial town of Duncairn, along with Chris's son Ewan's passionate advocacy of Communism - at the cost of nearly losing his life himself to police brutality. And yet even that has its moments. Ewan thinks at one point: 'And I went through what I did - just for that?...A hell of a thing to he History, Ewan!' There is poverty, there is Socialism, and then in the end Chris returns to the land she has in her heart. The last paragraph is unutterably sad and yet fitting. Chris is where she's meant to be...

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review really addresses the last two books from the scots quair trilogy, the first of which I reviewed separately. Both cloud Howe and grey granite remind me in some ways of Zola and the appalling conditions of the workers throughout Europe. These books are intensely moving, the language is a revelation - you don't need to understand every word and for me the whole experience was very powerful.

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

A dark, thought provoking book, not the same lyrical prose of Sunset Song. The trilogy, A Scots Quair, comes full circle in the end as Chris goes back to her roots. Chris Guthrie is such an intriguing character. She is one of the most believable, grounded characters that I have ever had the privilege of meeting in fiction.

[D Cox · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good and fitting conclusion. Leaves you feeling empty and unfulfilled. I suspect that was the point.
I liked the series and feel a little more familiar with the recent Scottish past.
But for me the stand out book was the first. I think we were meant to love it so much, just so we would be sad to see it all fall apart.

[Hazel McHaffie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was disappointing although the comments in the preface to the previous two should have prepared me. It lacks the music of the first two books and is altogether more black and stern. But it does give insights into the effects of communist fervour and poverty.

[Donna · Rating 2 out of 5]

A decent conclusion to the Scots Quair trilogy. Sunset Song was still the best by far though.

[Mylesgorton · Rating 5 out of 5]

must read after sunset song and cloud howe. great evocation of the period