Stewart
Active Member
Festival bookmarks Scotland's best read (Scotland on Sunday)
IT HAS taken six months, has included every library and bookshop in the country and has been endorsed by the culture minister. Now the search to find Scotland's best book has come to an end with a heart-rending tale of life on the eve of the First World War.
At a glittering ceremony last night at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon was unveiled as the ultimate Scottish read. The organisers said more than 5,000 people voted, with the first part of Gibbon's Scots Quair trilogy coming out on top.
The novel, which follows the story of Chris Guthrie as she struggles through life growing up in the Mearns of northeast Scotland, beat off stiff competition from The Game of Kings, by Dorothy Dunnett, and Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting to top a shortlist of three.
Last night Professor Willy Maley, of the department of English literature at Glasgow University, who organised the campaign, described the book as a world classic.
He said: "Sunset Song is very much a consensual choice. It's an older novel, it's a classic and a novel that is widely read at schools and studied in Scottish literature. Some people might say it is a softer, more sentimental side of Scottish literature as opposed to, say, Trainspotting, but I don't see it that way at all. It has an edge to it, it's quite dark and quite serious and deals with that whole inter-war period.
"This is a novel that, for most people, they encounter at a very early stage in life, which is not the same for other types of book. It's a very Scottish book but is also an absolute world classic that has been adapted for the stage and television, and for a lot of people it will be memorable and bound up in their memories of childhood."
Public voting for the books began in March with the publication of a guide, 100 Best Scottish Books of All Time. It was launched on World Book Day by culture minister Patricia Ferguson. The guide, produced by The List magazine and sponsored by Orange in association with the Scottish Book Trust, was edited by Prof Maley and Brian Donaldson, books editor at The List.
The titles selected were drawn from works of continuous prose, including fiction and non-fiction titles, both classic and contemporary.
An overview of Scottish poetry and drama was also included in the 80-page publication, copies of which were distributed to every school and library in Scotland.
Among those voted into the top 10 were JK Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone; The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, by Muriel Spark; and 1984, by George Orwell.
But the search has not been without its critics. Some authors questioned the validity of an exercise that failed to include classic novels such as Treasure Island, Peter Pan, Kidnapped, Waverley and Ivanhoe.
Stuart Kelly, author of The Book of Lost Books, said: "What does Sunset Song winning actually tell us about Scottish culture? Absolutely nothing. The whole exercise is so intellectually vapid the result is meaningless. Calling it 'the best' seems a misnomer - all it really means is 'most popular'.
"It's a bit like saying McDonald's is 'the best' restaurant or Tony Blair is 'the best' prime minister. Of course Sunset Song is a great novel, and if more people read it as a result that's wonderful. but people should realise that literature isn't some kind of competition."
Ian Rankin admitted that he had never read Sunset Song. Asked what he thought attracted people to the novel, he replied: "Absolutely no idea.
Maybe they studied it at school and it kept with them. I have to say I have never read it. The Game of Kings I can understand, because Dorothy Dunnett has a huge worldwide fan base and perhaps they were mobilised to vote for her.
"I was amazed that Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde wasn't even on the shortlist - for me that is the Scottish book that has had the most resonance through the ages and it seems as contemporary today as it ever did."
Marc Lambert, chief executive of the Scottish Book Trust, said: "The list was never meant to take this writer and rank them better than another writer - it really was to point out which book most resonated with Scots and to get a picture of a reading nation and the books that were important to it.
"The really interesting dichotomy for me is between Sunset Song and Trainspotting... It is rural Scotland and urban Scotland, it is early 20th century and late 20th century, and the language is an issue as well. Trainspotting is written in an urban demotic Scots, if you like, and Sunset Song has elements of Doric and that rural northeast dialect, so it's interesting that actually what comes out of this is the strength of the Scots language and the depth and variety of it."
More than 220,000 people have visited the Edinburgh Book Festival this year, making it the most successful to date. Big names like Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith and Margaret Atwood have helped more shows sell out than ever before.
THE TOP TEN
IT HAS taken six months, has included every library and bookshop in the country and has been endorsed by the culture minister. Now the search to find Scotland's best book has come to an end with a heart-rending tale of life on the eve of the First World War.
At a glittering ceremony last night at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon was unveiled as the ultimate Scottish read. The organisers said more than 5,000 people voted, with the first part of Gibbon's Scots Quair trilogy coming out on top.
The novel, which follows the story of Chris Guthrie as she struggles through life growing up in the Mearns of northeast Scotland, beat off stiff competition from The Game of Kings, by Dorothy Dunnett, and Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting to top a shortlist of three.
Last night Professor Willy Maley, of the department of English literature at Glasgow University, who organised the campaign, described the book as a world classic.
He said: "Sunset Song is very much a consensual choice. It's an older novel, it's a classic and a novel that is widely read at schools and studied in Scottish literature. Some people might say it is a softer, more sentimental side of Scottish literature as opposed to, say, Trainspotting, but I don't see it that way at all. It has an edge to it, it's quite dark and quite serious and deals with that whole inter-war period.
"This is a novel that, for most people, they encounter at a very early stage in life, which is not the same for other types of book. It's a very Scottish book but is also an absolute world classic that has been adapted for the stage and television, and for a lot of people it will be memorable and bound up in their memories of childhood."
Public voting for the books began in March with the publication of a guide, 100 Best Scottish Books of All Time. It was launched on World Book Day by culture minister Patricia Ferguson. The guide, produced by The List magazine and sponsored by Orange in association with the Scottish Book Trust, was edited by Prof Maley and Brian Donaldson, books editor at The List.
The titles selected were drawn from works of continuous prose, including fiction and non-fiction titles, both classic and contemporary.
An overview of Scottish poetry and drama was also included in the 80-page publication, copies of which were distributed to every school and library in Scotland.
Among those voted into the top 10 were JK Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone; The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, by Muriel Spark; and 1984, by George Orwell.
But the search has not been without its critics. Some authors questioned the validity of an exercise that failed to include classic novels such as Treasure Island, Peter Pan, Kidnapped, Waverley and Ivanhoe.
Stuart Kelly, author of The Book of Lost Books, said: "What does Sunset Song winning actually tell us about Scottish culture? Absolutely nothing. The whole exercise is so intellectually vapid the result is meaningless. Calling it 'the best' seems a misnomer - all it really means is 'most popular'.
"It's a bit like saying McDonald's is 'the best' restaurant or Tony Blair is 'the best' prime minister. Of course Sunset Song is a great novel, and if more people read it as a result that's wonderful. but people should realise that literature isn't some kind of competition."
Ian Rankin admitted that he had never read Sunset Song. Asked what he thought attracted people to the novel, he replied: "Absolutely no idea.
Maybe they studied it at school and it kept with them. I have to say I have never read it. The Game of Kings I can understand, because Dorothy Dunnett has a huge worldwide fan base and perhaps they were mobilised to vote for her.
"I was amazed that Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde wasn't even on the shortlist - for me that is the Scottish book that has had the most resonance through the ages and it seems as contemporary today as it ever did."
Marc Lambert, chief executive of the Scottish Book Trust, said: "The list was never meant to take this writer and rank them better than another writer - it really was to point out which book most resonated with Scots and to get a picture of a reading nation and the books that were important to it.
"The really interesting dichotomy for me is between Sunset Song and Trainspotting... It is rural Scotland and urban Scotland, it is early 20th century and late 20th century, and the language is an issue as well. Trainspotting is written in an urban demotic Scots, if you like, and Sunset Song has elements of Doric and that rural northeast dialect, so it's interesting that actually what comes out of this is the strength of the Scots language and the depth and variety of it."
More than 220,000 people have visited the Edinburgh Book Festival this year, making it the most successful to date. Big names like Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith and Margaret Atwood have helped more shows sell out than ever before.
THE TOP TEN
- Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon (1932): Lyrical crofting elegy that champions humanity and celebrates nature.
- The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett (1962): Part one of a historical romance saga, set in 16th-century Scotland.
- Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh (1993): Blackly comic portrait of young heroin users in Edinburgh in the 1980s.
- Lanark by Alasdair Gray (1981): Masterpiece following Lanark as he trips back from Glasgow to a dark, science-fiction based underworld.
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by JK Rowling (1997): Harry finds out he is a wizard and goes to Hogwarts.
- 1984 by George Orwell (1949): A haunting look at the future under a totalitarian regime.
- Born Free by Laura Hird (1999): Four family members live in a broiling hell of ongoing resentment and frustrations.
- An Oidhche Mus Do Sheol Sinn (The Night Before We Sailed) by Aonghas Padraig Caimbeul (2003): Heart-warming story of Gaelic life across the 20th century.
- The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (1961): A resonant tale set in an Edinburgh girl's school in 1930s.
- The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg (1824): Deeply disturbing story of the corruption of a Calvinist boy by a mysterious stranger.
