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3.45 AVERAGE
3.45 AVERAGE
I didn't get on with this book at all, I'm afraid. I believe the author is trying to write a novel about the gentry's attitudes in the midst of the Irish Troubles but it felt a bit dull to me. I did appreciate the descriptive language and the humour, but it only seemed to perk up at the end.
Please see my full review at http://bibliobeth.wordpress.com
Please see my full review at http://bibliobeth.wordpress.com
i normally adore middlebrow novels and i know elizabeth bowen is a very well-respected novelist but... this just ain't it chief.
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
challenging
emotional
funny
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
reflective
relaxing
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
funny
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
It's interesting how in a lot of the conversations in this book, the characters are talking more to themselves than the other, and often only half finish their sentences, but still appear to know what the other means. "The meaning in The Last September happens in ellipsis" (Maud Ellmann)
fav quotes:
-Gerald would have wished to explain that no one could have a sounder respect than himself and his country for the whole principle of nationality, and that it was with some awareness of misdirection, even of paradox, that he was out here to hunt and shoot the Irish.
-I can't start playing the piano before I've even told them I've come to lunch. I may be musical, Lois, but I'm not artistic.
-A hardy unawareness of self in her heightened one's own consciousness. Her lightest look watched, her casual listening assessed, her speech was a lightning attack on one's integrity out of the strong-hold of her indifference.
-Marda laughed and began screwing on the lids of her little pots. In the light of her brilliant life, her deftness seemed to Lois inimitable. One would have had to have lived twenty-nine years as fast, as securely and wildly, to screw pink celluloid caps on to small white pots with just that lightness of finger-tip, just degree of amusement, just that detachment in smile and absorption in attitude.
-But if one stops talking, they tell one the most extraordinary things, about their husbands, their money affairs, their insides. They don’t seem discouraged by not being asked.
-When you have to think so much of what other people feel about you there seems no time to think what you feel about them.
-My dear, I am not an umbrella
-You don't know what it's like for a snail, being walked on..
"I don't understand you, he cried in agony. "Who is a snail?'
-It must be because of Ireland he was in such a hurry; down from the mountains, making a short cut through their demesne. Here was something else that she could not share, She could not conceive of her country emotionally: it was a way of living, an abstract of several landscapes, or an oblique frayed island, moored at the north but with an air of being detached and washed out west from the British coast.
-He was not nervous at all. Queer, she confusedly thought, how men throw off action without a quiver at severance from the self that goes into it. They remain complete, the action hangs in the air of the place, above the grass or furniture, crystallising in memory; eternal, massive and edged to the touch of thought as, to the bodily touch, a grand piano. She herself felt bound to all she had done emotionally.
-He was flattered but uneasy under Laurence's interest, which had the awkward menace of someone preparing to cast a net.
“For instance, what do you, personally, think about all this?'
"Well, my opinion is -“
“Oh, but I don't want your opinion, I want your point of view.”
"Well, the situation's rotten. But right is right.”
"Why?'
"Well... from the point of view of civilization. Also, you see, they don't fight clean.”
“Oh, there's no public school spirit in Ireland. But do tell me- what do you mean by the point of view of civilization?”
“Oh-ours.”
Laurence smiled his appreciation: the conviction, stated without arrogance, had a ring of integrity. Gerald, embarrassed by this benevolence, had recourse again to the back of his head, so gratifyingly polished.
“If you come to think,” he explained, “I mean, looking back on history - not that I'm intellectual - we do seem the only people.”
-He had heard that Oxford was full of Socialism of a wrongness that was the outcome of too much thinking, and in the light of this it did appear to him that Laurence's conversation had been decidedly Sinn Fein.
fav quotes:
-Gerald would have wished to explain that no one could have a sounder respect than himself and his country for the whole principle of nationality, and that it was with some awareness of misdirection, even of paradox, that he was out here to hunt and shoot the Irish.
-I can't start playing the piano before I've even told them I've come to lunch. I may be musical, Lois, but I'm not artistic.
-A hardy unawareness of self in her heightened one's own consciousness. Her lightest look watched, her casual listening assessed, her speech was a lightning attack on one's integrity out of the strong-hold of her indifference.
-Marda laughed and began screwing on the lids of her little pots. In the light of her brilliant life, her deftness seemed to Lois inimitable. One would have had to have lived twenty-nine years as fast, as securely and wildly, to screw pink celluloid caps on to small white pots with just that lightness of finger-tip, just degree of amusement, just that detachment in smile and absorption in attitude.
-But if one stops talking, they tell one the most extraordinary things, about their husbands, their money affairs, their insides. They don’t seem discouraged by not being asked.
-When you have to think so much of what other people feel about you there seems no time to think what you feel about them.
-My dear, I am not an umbrella
-You don't know what it's like for a snail, being walked on..
"I don't understand you, he cried in agony. "Who is a snail?'
-It must be because of Ireland he was in such a hurry; down from the mountains, making a short cut through their demesne. Here was something else that she could not share, She could not conceive of her country emotionally: it was a way of living, an abstract of several landscapes, or an oblique frayed island, moored at the north but with an air of being detached and washed out west from the British coast.
-He was not nervous at all. Queer, she confusedly thought, how men throw off action without a quiver at severance from the self that goes into it. They remain complete, the action hangs in the air of the place, above the grass or furniture, crystallising in memory; eternal, massive and edged to the touch of thought as, to the bodily touch, a grand piano. She herself felt bound to all she had done emotionally.
-He was flattered but uneasy under Laurence's interest, which had the awkward menace of someone preparing to cast a net.
“For instance, what do you, personally, think about all this?'
"Well, my opinion is -“
“Oh, but I don't want your opinion, I want your point of view.”
"Well, the situation's rotten. But right is right.”
"Why?'
"Well... from the point of view of civilization. Also, you see, they don't fight clean.”
“Oh, there's no public school spirit in Ireland. But do tell me- what do you mean by the point of view of civilization?”
“Oh-ours.”
Laurence smiled his appreciation: the conviction, stated without arrogance, had a ring of integrity. Gerald, embarrassed by this benevolence, had recourse again to the back of his head, so gratifyingly polished.
“If you come to think,” he explained, “I mean, looking back on history - not that I'm intellectual - we do seem the only people.”
-He had heard that Oxford was full of Socialism of a wrongness that was the outcome of too much thinking, and in the light of this it did appear to him that Laurence's conversation had been decidedly Sinn Fein.
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated