Book Review: Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon

[simply_shipping]

Title: Sunset Song (A Scots Quair #1)
Author: Lewis Grassic Gibbon (pseudonym for James Leslie Mitchell)
Pagecount: 248 (paperback)
Publisher: Polygon
Publishing date: April 9, 2006 (original published 1932)
Goodreads rating mean: 3.98 (161 ratings)
Goodreads rating mode: 5 (39%)
Goodreads rating median: 4
Publisher's summary: 'Oh, she hated and

Comments

[ardys_the_ghoul]

Oh, God. I'm one of those people who cannot stand dialect in books.

I mean, yeah, it adds to the atmosphere and all, but it really takes me out of the story when I have to slow down to figure out what in the hell these people are saying.

Actually, one of my least favorite examples of this happened in one of my favorite books, not because it was hard to understand, but because I felt like the author was trying to write a dialect he knew nothing about (or at least, only second-hand), so it was totally over-the-top and fake-sounding.

[kerneyhead]

I should have clarified. I like good well written dialog, especially when it's hard. Best example was book I read were many of the characters were fur trappers in the early 1800's. The author did his homework and the book was shortlisted for the pulitzer that year, in part because he 'got it right.'
On the other hand, I agree with you not getting it right can be very annoying.

[simply_shipping]

Now I'm curious to know what book that was. :D

But yeah, if there had had been fewer 'wtf is this?' words, I would've said that this was an example of dialect done right: the words were spelled correctly, there weren't any apostrophes just hanging out to annoy me, that kind of thing. The way they spoke was evoked in the speech patterns and word choices. But holy hell, the sheer number of unfamiliar words that he was dropping everywhere... Like you said, slowing down to figure out what's being said does not make a book fun.

[ardys_the_ghoul]

Ha, it was actually Dracula. Funnily enough, it wasn't Van Helsing's quirky speech that got to me (English is his second language! Of course he's going to have trouble!)--it was Quincy, aka The Texan.

Obviously, I don't know for sure, but I got the distinct impression that Stoker had never met an American before. Quincy read as a parody to me--his speech was so over-the-top and cliche. It seemed like Stoker had read about Texas and thought it would be cool if one of his characters was a Texan. (I don't know if that's the case, but that's how it came off, to me at least.) John Wayne didn't even talk like that!

[simply_shipping]

I always meant to read Dracula someday, and if it's only the one character, I'll probably laugh my way past it. And I'll laugh harder if it's actually true that Stoker had never heard a Texan speak before - it's hard enough getting accents right when you're familiar with them! XD