Publication
Anchor (2000), Edition: 1, 320 pages
Original publication date
1929
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Description
The Last September is Elizabeth Bowen's portrait of a young woman's coming of age in a brutalized time and place, where the ordinariness of life floats like music over the impending doom of history. In 1920, at their country home in County Cork, Sir Richard Naylor and his wife, Lady Myra, and their friends maintain a skeptical attitude toward the events going on around them, but behind the facade of tennis parties and army camp dances, all know that the end is approaching--the end of British rule in the south of Ireland and the demise of a way of life that had survived for centuries. Their niece, Lois Farquar, attempts to live her own life and gain her own freedoms from the very class that her elders are vainly defending. The Last September depicts the tensions between love and the longing for freedom, between tradition and the terrifying prospect of independence, both political and spiritual. "Brilliant.... A successful combination of social comedy and private tragedy."--The Times Literary Supplement (London)… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member wandering_star
The core of The Last September is the story of a young woman (Lois) coming of age in a grand country house. But if you think from that description that you know what to expect, you're probably wrong. Yes, there's a young man on the horizon, yes, there are family tensions, and yes, there are
Lois is extremely self-conscious in her new adulthood, always seeing herself from outside. She knows she is supposed to be fun-loving, reckless and happy, and she tries to appear so, largely in order to fit in. But she is always unsure of what she should do. Walking with her young admirer Gerald, "conscious of many people's attention, she did not know if she seemed enviable or foolish". The relationship between them is also beautifully drawn. Gerald is uncomplicatedly in love with her, and while she does not care for him in the same way - indeed, she hopes that life and love will hold something more for her - she is still much more conscious of him, his feelings, his presence, than he is of her. Ultimately, both of them are trapped by the artificiality of the social structures which surround them - mainly in terms of the 'acceptable' ways in which men and women are permitted to interact.
The background to all this is aristocratic Anglo-Irish life in the 1920s, painted as very much dislocated from the land. Life in the house is all empty formality, and the grand families are both patronised by the recently arrived English military families and alienated from the rural Irish families who live around them. There is a lot of depth to this as well - another reader might have focused as much on the question of Anglo-Irishness or on the symbolism of the house and land as on Lois' character.
Reading this back, it all sounds rather depressing. But this was a book I really enjoyed reading - it contains a lot of humour and acute psychological insight, as well as just being beautifully written. This is one of those books where you feel that every sentence has weight, even if sometimes the significance is only apparent later. It almost feels like a distillation of a much thicker book. Several times I flicked back through the pages and was surprised to find that an incident which I remembered as pretty significant had only taken a page or so to describe.
I've never read Bowen before, but I would compare her to Chekhov (not least for the way that perspectives of life open out with a visitor to the house, only to narrow again) and Woolf (for the psychological acuteness).
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elements of the awkward comedy of class stratifications. But the focus is much more on the psychological - so, for example, one of the house guests (a married man) becomes attracted to another visitor. Nothing actually happens between them - but the book focuses on the emotional ripples it sends through the house (as it turns out, everyone is aware of the attraction). One very funny - but poignant - scene shows a conversation between the two, where she is uncomfortably aware of his feelings, and trying - without being blunt - to head off any declaration of devotion.Lois is extremely self-conscious in her new adulthood, always seeing herself from outside. She knows she is supposed to be fun-loving, reckless and happy, and she tries to appear so, largely in order to fit in. But she is always unsure of what she should do. Walking with her young admirer Gerald, "conscious of many people's attention, she did not know if she seemed enviable or foolish". The relationship between them is also beautifully drawn. Gerald is uncomplicatedly in love with her, and while she does not care for him in the same way - indeed, she hopes that life and love will hold something more for her - she is still much more conscious of him, his feelings, his presence, than he is of her. Ultimately, both of them are trapped by the artificiality of the social structures which surround them - mainly in terms of the 'acceptable' ways in which men and women are permitted to interact.
The background to all this is aristocratic Anglo-Irish life in the 1920s, painted as very much dislocated from the land. Life in the house is all empty formality, and the grand families are both patronised by the recently arrived English military families and alienated from the rural Irish families who live around them. There is a lot of depth to this as well - another reader might have focused as much on the question of Anglo-Irishness or on the symbolism of the house and land as on Lois' character.
Reading this back, it all sounds rather depressing. But this was a book I really enjoyed reading - it contains a lot of humour and acute psychological insight, as well as just being beautifully written. This is one of those books where you feel that every sentence has weight, even if sometimes the significance is only apparent later. It almost feels like a distillation of a much thicker book. Several times I flicked back through the pages and was surprised to find that an incident which I remembered as pretty significant had only taken a page or so to describe.
I've never read Bowen before, but I would compare her to Chekhov (not least for the way that perspectives of life open out with a visitor to the house, only to narrow again) and Woolf (for the psychological acuteness).
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LibraryThing member ltimmel
This novel is, at its most obvious level, a comedy of manners. A few days after finishing it, I find myself speculating about Elizabeth Bowen's choice of writing about the overthrow of British rule in Ireland by way of this particular form. Bowen was a modernist, and so I can easily imagine that
The narrative is pretty much fixed on an Anglo-Irish aristocratic circle whose status and way of life depend entirely on British rule-- but not only on their complex, finely drawn interpersonal relations, but also (or especially) on the ironies of that dependence. I suppose Bowen's interest in the ironies are, actually, fairly well served by a comedy of manners. The best bits for me, though, are the occasional moments in the narrative when the atmosphere rather than the characters' quirks and interpersonal tensions dominates the narrative. My favorite example of this is the first description of an abandoned mill that a few paragraphs later becomes the scene of an awkward collision between the comedy of manners and the scene of political strife that constantly strains against the limits of comedy of manners:
Mounting the tree-crowded, steep slope some roofless cottages nestled under the flank of the mill with sinister pathos. A track going up the hill from the gateless gateway perished among the trees from disues. Banal enough in life to have closed this valley to the imagination, the dead mill now entered the democracy of ghostliness, equalled broken palaces in futility and sadness; was transfigured by some response of the spirit, showing not the decline of its meanness, simply decline; took on all of a past to which it had given nothing.
That last sentence could almost be taken for the novel's summing up of the castles and mansions that burn, and the aristocrats who evacuate the scene, at the end of the book.
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while writing this novel she might have been wary of falling into a nostalgic tone; so perhaps that accounts for her choice. This "comedy" ends not in marriage, though, but in a series of departures and separations, a violent offstage death, and the post-narrative burning down of the primary scene of the story. The narrative is pretty much fixed on an Anglo-Irish aristocratic circle whose status and way of life depend entirely on British rule-- but not only on their complex, finely drawn interpersonal relations, but also (or especially) on the ironies of that dependence. I suppose Bowen's interest in the ironies are, actually, fairly well served by a comedy of manners. The best bits for me, though, are the occasional moments in the narrative when the atmosphere rather than the characters' quirks and interpersonal tensions dominates the narrative. My favorite example of this is the first description of an abandoned mill that a few paragraphs later becomes the scene of an awkward collision between the comedy of manners and the scene of political strife that constantly strains against the limits of comedy of manners:
Mounting the tree-crowded, steep slope some roofless cottages nestled under the flank of the mill with sinister pathos. A track going up the hill from the gateless gateway perished among the trees from disues. Banal enough in life to have closed this valley to the imagination, the dead mill now entered the democracy of ghostliness, equalled broken palaces in futility and sadness; was transfigured by some response of the spirit, showing not the decline of its meanness, simply decline; took on all of a past to which it had given nothing.
That last sentence could almost be taken for the novel's summing up of the castles and mansions that burn, and the aristocrats who evacuate the scene, at the end of the book.
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LibraryThing member otterley
Girls will carry on growing up, discovering about love, learning about adult life and generally creating confusion and unease, no matter how drastic the political crisis may be affecting their world. Bowen portrays an Anglo Irish world that we know (and the protagonists suspect) to be doomed. Her
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characters are shadow like, occasionally bursting through into rude life, but more often floating on a very shallow surface of parties and frivolities, while Palladian mansions burn around them. The complexities of loyalties in a civil war, in Ireland and England, come into play - but Bowen portrays an etiolated aristocracy, much of which will make its way to float elsewhere. There are echoes of [Troubles] here in particular, though this novel lacks the vigour and black humour of Farrell, replacing it with an ethereal tonality. Show Less
LibraryThing member whitewavedarling
I don't have much to say here--I found the writing uninspired, and the characters unlikable as well as uninteresting. I might have enjoyed this had it been a novella, but as is, it simply dragged on for me with one needless character blending into another even as one meaningless conversation
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blended into one more. Simply, I saw the intent, but was incredibly bored by the process and outcome. Show Less
LibraryThing member stillatim
The earliest Bowen I've read- not as great as Heat of the Day, but one of the best I've read. The prose is extremely dense, and beautiful; the characters are compelling; but there's not much story to speak of, and the ending's kind of unnecessary and lame. I wish I could have a chat at the bar with
In short: a great study of how people everywhere, when faced with the breakdown of the world in which they are comfortable and greatly privileged, can pretend that that breakdown isn't happening. Also quite funny in a low-key kind of way.
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some of the people whose reviews complain about a lack of irony on the narrator's part, saying that Lois is self-obsessed, that everyone is self-obsessed, and that Bowen thinks this is the way things should be. I thought the book was much more ambiguous: nostalgic, sure, but nostalgic for a peace that is now seen to be morally compromising and impossible; I took the whole point of the book to be that Lois's family, in 'protecting' her (whether from her suitors or from the world at large), was actually doing her quite a degree of harm (i.e., forcing her to be ignorant of the world around her rather than allowing her to engage with it), and that any appearance of self-obsession should be read as the result of the family's actions rather than any flaw in Lois, who seems to me quite eager to break out of her narrow society, while admitting to herself the comforts of that society. In short: a great study of how people everywhere, when faced with the breakdown of the world in which they are comfortable and greatly privileged, can pretend that that breakdown isn't happening. Also quite funny in a low-key kind of way.
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LibraryThing member Susanne_53
I wanted to love this book but I found it really hard going. It is set in Ireland during the 'Troubles' in the early 20th century, but not much is said about the politics of the time. The story is about a self indulgent aristocratic Irish family and their visitors. I couldn't care about any of the
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characters. The 2 stars are for Bowen's descriptions of the house and countryside which are evocative. Show Less
LibraryThing member jwhenderson
The novel is set in 1920 and while the Irish war of independence rages outside the gates of their County Cork home, Sir Richard Naylor and his Anglo-Irish family continue their privileged life of tea and tennis. Bowen's 1929 novel is a strongly autobiographical portrait of a lost class marking out
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its final moments — every garden party, every house guest and every flirtation is touched by a sense of impending extinction, all delineated by her precise prose. One more reason to return to Elizabeth Bowen for good reading. Show Less
LibraryThing member cushlareads
After about 20 pages of this book I thought I'd found a new favourite author. Thie novel is set in Ireland at the time of the Troubles (early 1920s). It's centred around an aristocratic Anglo-Irish family who live at Danielstown, and Bowen writes beautifully about the countryside and Ireland. I
That changed pretty quickly, because I kept waiting to find a character whom I liked. I waited for 300 pages and I wish I'd quit while I was still impressed with the prose. Somebody please, please tell me that Elizabeth Bowen gets better, or that I have missed the point, but I just **did not care** what happened to Lois, Gerald, Marda, Francie, Hugo, Laurence, the Naylors, Lizzie, David, or anybody else.
*spoilers, not huge ones, but some.*
Our heroine is about 18, the orphaned niece of the subtly unpleasant Lady Naylor. She lives at Danielstown, a very very big house, and is waiting for something to happen to her (probably for a husband to appear). A likely prospect does just that - Gerald, who's a subaltern in the English Army, over to put down the local resistance. Lois is not too sure about Gerald to start with but he seems to give her something to think about. Gerald has no money and no family. He's also a bit drippy. Lots more happens with Lois and Gerald, and Lady Naylor shows herself to be a conniving old so-and-so.
Laurence is Lois's cousin, also orphaned but on Sir Richard Naylor's side of the family. He at least had some personality, but it was an unpleasant one. Sir Richard was ok, but hardly says anything.
Hugo and Francie Montmorency visit the Naylors for a long long long time. Hugo was once in love with Lois's mum Laura, but is now married to Francie, who is fragile (and seemed nice enough). They spend their lives visiting - their stuff is in storage.
Marda, the next visitor, upsets everyone - Hugo falls in love with her (not clear why), but she is about to marry an English man. Nobody believes that she will, but she does. I think I was meant to like Marda, but I really did not. Lois is infatuated with her, possibly because she at least was not a wet blanket.
Lizzie is Lois's friend, who talks another subaltern into getting engaged, then cannot tell anyone for ages. L
This book had such great potential for me - I love books like this but I have to like at least one of the characters. I do feel like I might have missed some huge literary thing here, because I just read without really knowing much about How To Read a Novel, but that has done me pretty well for several decades... Her writing has the potential to be wonderful. There were some funny, really cutting scenes concerning English attitudes to the locals, and the background about the English in Ireland was interesting, but nowhere near enough for me to want to read this book.
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fell asleep at that point but woke up wanting to keep reading.That changed pretty quickly, because I kept waiting to find a character whom I liked. I waited for 300 pages and I wish I'd quit while I was still impressed with the prose. Somebody please, please tell me that Elizabeth Bowen gets better, or that I have missed the point, but I just **did not care** what happened to Lois, Gerald, Marda, Francie, Hugo, Laurence, the Naylors, Lizzie, David, or anybody else.
*spoilers, not huge ones, but some.*
Our heroine is about 18, the orphaned niece of the subtly unpleasant Lady Naylor. She lives at Danielstown, a very very big house, and is waiting for something to happen to her (probably for a husband to appear). A likely prospect does just that - Gerald, who's a subaltern in the English Army, over to put down the local resistance. Lois is not too sure about Gerald to start with but he seems to give her something to think about. Gerald has no money and no family. He's also a bit drippy. Lots more happens with Lois and Gerald, and Lady Naylor shows herself to be a conniving old so-and-so.
Laurence is Lois's cousin, also orphaned but on Sir Richard Naylor's side of the family. He at least had some personality, but it was an unpleasant one. Sir Richard was ok, but hardly says anything.
Hugo and Francie Montmorency visit the Naylors for a long long long time. Hugo was once in love with Lois's mum Laura, but is now married to Francie, who is fragile (and seemed nice enough). They spend their lives visiting - their stuff is in storage.
Marda, the next visitor, upsets everyone - Hugo falls in love with her (not clear why), but she is about to marry an English man. Nobody believes that she will, but she does. I think I was meant to like Marda, but I really did not. Lois is infatuated with her, possibly because she at least was not a wet blanket.
Lizzie is Lois's friend, who talks another subaltern into getting engaged, then cannot tell anyone for ages. L
This book had such great potential for me - I love books like this but I have to like at least one of the characters. I do feel like I might have missed some huge literary thing here, because I just read without really knowing much about How To Read a Novel, but that has done me pretty well for several decades... Her writing has the potential to be wonderful. There were some funny, really cutting scenes concerning English attitudes to the locals, and the background about the English in Ireland was interesting, but nowhere near enough for me to want to read this book.
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LibraryThing member agentsam008
Fairly plotless so it was hard to engage in. There are two many silences in the novel - the characters pretend not to notice the reality of the world outside Danielstown - and in a way Bowen may have done this deliberately to present how the Irish treasure memory. Thus a fine picture depicting the
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attitudes of the Anglo-Irish in 1920 Ireland but very static as a novel. Show Less
LibraryThing member autumnesf
Honestly - this was a plotless and pointless book. Good thing the author writes well or it would have been a total bust.
LibraryThing member sonofcarc
Elizabeth Bowen was, or so I gather, a friend and rival of Virginia Woolf; her style in this early novel is so much like Woolf's that if you had told me Woolf wrote it, I'd have been fooled. In later novels, Bowen developed her own style -- which still shows Woolf's influence, as well as that of
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Henry James. Show Less
LibraryThing member tercat
I found a great old British hardcover copy of this book at the Brattle Book Shop today. Yay!
LibraryThing member florasuncle
Beautifully written, and, for good measure, a tour round Irish politics in the early 20th Century. Makes you wonder if things would have been different if the Black & Tans had not been turned loose on the population. Loved it even though some of the dialog sounds a bit Dame Celia Molestrangler and
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Binky Huckaback (English readers of a certain age will know what I am talking about). Will try to find the film on DVD. Show Less
LibraryThing member jeffome
This one was a challenge for me for several reasons. First of all, i became immediately aware that this book was based on a historic time period of trouble and dissension between the Irish and the English that i am completely unfamiliar with. But to look up the facts while reading the book seemed
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to me likely to ruin the end of the book for me, so i chose to grin and bear it.....probably not the right decision. I was never quite clear who was who and which side of what they were on....not a good recipe for enjoying a story. It seemed at times remarkably sad, but also quite humorous in the ridiculous way in which the household spent their time. Some very good writing with rather wordy descriptions, quite clever at times at describing moods and settings, but so wordy that my hectic schedule and reading in fits and starts did not really allow me to enjoy that to its fullest. And there was some blatant foreshadowing that seemed unnecessary. So, the issues seem more my own than Bowen's, thus i did not go below a 3-star rating. I will try not to let this impact my moving forward with the rest of Bowen's work. Show Less
LibraryThing member Kristelh
1993309
Kristel Hart's review Sep 22, 2016 · edit
liked it
Read from September 08 to 22, 2016
** spoiler alert ** Story set in Ireland during the time period of the Irish War of Independence written bye Elizabeth Bowen and published in 1929. The Irish War of Independence was a guerrilla war fought
So here's what wiki and the cover:
Themes:
Sterility: life is pretty much dead, there are no children
Big House: often talks about 20 windows facing out, empty, blank.
Tensions between love and freedom, tradition and
Motifs:
Unfinished sentence (so many, so many, so many)
The cover of the book hints that this is a combination of social comedy and private tragedy, so we know that "something bad is coming".
Kristel Hart's review Sep 22, 2016 · edit
liked it
Read from September 08 to 22, 2016
** spoiler alert ** Story set in Ireland during the time period of the Irish War of Independence written bye Elizabeth Bowen and published in 1929. The Irish War of Independence was a guerrilla war fought
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from 1919 to 1921 between the IRA and the British security forces in Ireland. The characters consist of people from the Irish mansion at Danielstown and the British soldiers (subalterns). To me, it was about what life would be like for a young person growing up in uncertain times at the age when young people are interested in each other, about the awkwardness of feeling you are mature when you really aren't. But it is also about how how people don't really say what they really mean. Over all, the story is more a study of character and less plot driven. It was often very boring and slow to read. It was easy to put the book down and do something else. The last part of the book was a bit better. It is the story of the coming of age of Lois and the ending of an age of the Irish mansion land owners. So here's what wiki and the cover:
Themes:
Sterility: life is pretty much dead, there are no children
Big House: often talks about 20 windows facing out, empty, blank.
Tensions between love and freedom, tradition and
Motifs:
Unfinished sentence (so many, so many, so many)
The cover of the book hints that this is a combination of social comedy and private tragedy, so we know that "something bad is coming".
Show Less
LibraryThing member charlie68
A difficult read with vague language and shifting perspective, but well-written.
LibraryThing member japaul22
I really liked Bowen's To the North, but this book I just couldn't connect with. It's set in Ireland during the 1920s conflicts and the political climate influences the life of the main character, Lois, who is coming into adulthood among the societal changes. The book sets up a conflict between an
The premise was good, but I didn't connect to any of the characters to the point where I could barely care to take the time to keep them straight in my mind.
I wouldn't start here if you're interested in reading Bowen's works.
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older generation's opinions of how life should work and the younger generations ideas of love, marriage, and adventure. The premise was good, but I didn't connect to any of the characters to the point where I could barely care to take the time to keep them straight in my mind.
I wouldn't start here if you're interested in reading Bowen's works.
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LibraryThing member Tytania
Dense, talky, thinky. I hardly ever understood what was going on. It's about Ireland.
Language
Original language
English
ISBN
0385720149 / 9780385720144
Physical description
320 p.; 5.16 inches
Pages
320