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3.45 AVERAGE
3.45 AVERAGE
ETA: For some reason this book had gotten stuck in my head (all the doors and matchsticks, probably), so when I saw it at the library I decided to give it another try. And this time through I got an absolute shedload more out of the reading.
A lot of what I was able to pick up from the book came in large part from reading "Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September: A Postcolonial Reading" by Kanako Yamaneki. Yamaneki focuses in on the tension in the book between the idle Anglo-Irish upper class and the emerging Irish War of Independence, by looking at the themes of colonization and restraint. This was hugely helpful for me in doing a revised reading of the book for myself, especially all the doorways.
According to Yamaneki, Bowen deliberately uses open doors as references to the Irish Big House value of hospitality; who opens their door to you and which doors stand open or are found shut become a whole theme.
From there, I just decided to read Danielstown as a house, rather than focusing on the novel as a whole.
Danielstown is an Irish Big House where the inhabitants engage in shutting themselves away from the realities of the deepening guerilla war going on quite literally in their own backyard.
You see rooms that stand largely empty, or are filled with dying flowers (wham! wham! goes the bat of symbolism). One sitting room where a lot of the major conversations take place is described as having windows kept closed against the outside, while also lined with a wall of mirrors. The Danielstown dining room is lined with portraits of the inhabitants' dead ancestors, all staring down at them while they eat.
These are aristocrats who only want to see themselves and their own kind. Poor Gerald, even as a blundering colonizer, does not fit their vision of who they want to see in their rooms.
There's a great moment where one of the guests, Francie, bemoans how even when she shuts the curtains in her bedroom, she can still see the great faces of the roses outside pressing insistently against the windowpane. All I could think of at that point was a similar scene in Neil Stephenson's Diamond Age, where all the rioters are pressing their faces against the window to get to the imperiled heroine inside.
*chef's kiss*
From there, it's easy to read all the places where Danielstown imprisons its inhabitants, as well as theoretically protecting them, and the unending series of rooms filled with awkward chairs reads in a much sadder and more decrepit way. This is a very empty Big House, haunted by deeply unhappy people, each deeply unhappy in their own way as their preferred way of life dies around them.
Even the dining room of dead ancestors is later mirrored in an army wife's sitting room, where she maintains a wall of photographs of Irish prisoners of war, many of whom, we are told, have been killed by the British. Danielstown, as a prison, has been in operation for a very long time.
Yamaneki's reading of Gerald colonizing Lois as an unwilling conquest is spot-on, as is the analysis of Lois and Marda's trip to the old mill as being Lois' symbolic introduction to adult sexuality. What's odd to me, though, is that Yamaneki nowhere mentions how Lois is clearly struggling throughout the book to come to terms with her own bisexuality.
Bowen, who was bisexual herself, has mentioned that Lois is a stand-in for her own younger self. The novel is loosely based on experiences she had at her family's own Big House, Bowen's Court.
And then there's the text.
Lois is ambivalent about two men in the book, Gerald and the older married Hugo, and she physically recoils each time they touch her. She keeps wondering why she's not excited by their touch, mainly in letters to her best friend, Viola. So there's poor Gerald, doing his utmost to woo Lois, not knowing that she's thinking the whole time about how she just wants to go write to Viola about it:
Look, if you're with a dude, and his getting all up on you makes you obsess about writing to your girlfriend, that is a sign from the universe.
Later she runs from Gerald --"he is so terribly there" (Bowen's italics) -- because she's expecting, with a "tearing feeling of expectation" a letter from Viola.
Sis. Come on. Let's talk.
Later, when older, unmarried Marda arrives, Lois follows her around, fascinated. Marda is glamorous and unmarried, and has broken engagements in her past. Lois, to whom Marda's bedroom door is closed (theme!), knocks for admittance and then sits watching Marda paint her nails, before, in all seriousness, showing Marda her etchings. Lois later sneaks into Marda's room (door again: closed) and, finding Marda's fur coat, puts it on and buries her face in the collar.
Okay.
In [b:The Hotel|625215|The Hotel|Elizabeth Bowen|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1219805584l/625215._SY75_.jpg|611572], the young heroine, struggling with her attraction to an older woman, also buries her face in the collar of the woman's fur coat.
I mean--
("She hoped for the proper agony, finding a coat she wanted...")
I swear these analyses write themselves.
Later, Lois and Marda take a trip to a decrepit old mill, and Yamaneki incisively codes their entering of it (sans Hugo, who wanders off in a huff) as weirdly erotic. While there, they encounter an IRA gunman with a (phallic) pistol, that goes off and injures Marda. So... heterosexuality. Sounds good.
Poor Lois.
As an orphan who's barely tolerated by her aunt and uncle, she's confined by Danielstown (and constantly escaping into the wild country or to army dances where veterans with shellshock throw sandwiches at her (men: this is not an effective way to woo women)) and to a large extent trapped in her dead mother's shadow as well.
She's hemmed in by women making terrible marriages -- her mother's to an Englishman, where she ends up dead; Marda's to another Englishman, where it's strongly hinted that she ends up bored out of her mind; Francie's to Hugo, where she ends up de-romantically (s)mothered; Livvy's to David Armstrong, where she ends up becoming a scandal -- and trying to talk herself into loving Gerald, mainly because he forces kisses on her and won't leave.
At the same time, Lois is an unlikely (and frankly unlikeable) heroine who acts as an agent of Danielstown's destruction. Where Francie lives in mortal terror of the roses getting in at the closed window, it's Lois who brings roses into Francie and Hugo's room and arranges them in a vase. It's Lois who brings Gerald into the house, and Lois who, if you become obsessed with the domestic architecture theme here, continues to open doors closed against her and leave them open in her wake.
And every time Lois leaves Danielstown she observes how rot is setting in around it, creeping up to it, and encroaching on it:
So at the end of the book Lois does the only sensible thing and runs away to France, leaving Danielstown to its fate.
Four stars. More matchsticks and uncomfortable chairs for everyone.
Glad we got that all cleared up.
-----
Original review:
I'm usually a huge Bowen fan, but this one left me just puzzled, more than anything else. There's a lot of casually appearing in doorways and picking up conversations that ostensibly began earlier, and a lot of conversations that consist solely of characters interrupting each other, or talking to themselves, or musing about the conversations they wish they were having, which aren't the ones the reader is currently following. A lot of things either clearly unsaid, opaquely unsaid or said in other rooms by other characters. Lots of matchsticks, Sebastian.
Actual. Matchsticks.
This leads to some fairly uneven pacing and a lot of confusing situations; by the end it felt like 200 pages of musing about interior furnishings, a minor relation's clumsiness and how self-conscious everyone should be, followed by 50 pages of Things Happening Quickly, and an abrupt ending.
It does, however, include a young woman burying her face in an older woman's fur collar, because Bowen.
A lot of what I was able to pick up from the book came in large part from reading "Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September: A Postcolonial Reading" by Kanako Yamaneki. Yamaneki focuses in on the tension in the book between the idle Anglo-Irish upper class and the emerging Irish War of Independence, by looking at the themes of colonization and restraint. This was hugely helpful for me in doing a revised reading of the book for myself, especially all the doorways.
According to Yamaneki, Bowen deliberately uses open doors as references to the Irish Big House value of hospitality; who opens their door to you and which doors stand open or are found shut become a whole theme.
From there, I just decided to read Danielstown as a house, rather than focusing on the novel as a whole.
Danielstown is an Irish Big House where the inhabitants engage in shutting themselves away from the realities of the deepening guerilla war going on quite literally in their own backyard.
You see rooms that stand largely empty, or are filled with dying flowers (wham! wham! goes the bat of symbolism). One sitting room where a lot of the major conversations take place is described as having windows kept closed against the outside, while also lined with a wall of mirrors. The Danielstown dining room is lined with portraits of the inhabitants' dead ancestors, all staring down at them while they eat.
These are aristocrats who only want to see themselves and their own kind. Poor Gerald, even as a blundering colonizer, does not fit their vision of who they want to see in their rooms.
There's a great moment where one of the guests, Francie, bemoans how even when she shuts the curtains in her bedroom, she can still see the great faces of the roses outside pressing insistently against the windowpane. All I could think of at that point was a similar scene in Neil Stephenson's Diamond Age, where all the rioters are pressing their faces against the window to get to the imperiled heroine inside.
*chef's kiss*
From there, it's easy to read all the places where Danielstown imprisons its inhabitants, as well as theoretically protecting them, and the unending series of rooms filled with awkward chairs reads in a much sadder and more decrepit way. This is a very empty Big House, haunted by deeply unhappy people, each deeply unhappy in their own way as their preferred way of life dies around them.
Even the dining room of dead ancestors is later mirrored in an army wife's sitting room, where she maintains a wall of photographs of Irish prisoners of war, many of whom, we are told, have been killed by the British. Danielstown, as a prison, has been in operation for a very long time.
Yamaneki's reading of Gerald colonizing Lois as an unwilling conquest is spot-on, as is the analysis of Lois and Marda's trip to the old mill as being Lois' symbolic introduction to adult sexuality. What's odd to me, though, is that Yamaneki nowhere mentions how Lois is clearly struggling throughout the book to come to terms with her own bisexuality.
Bowen, who was bisexual herself, has mentioned that Lois is a stand-in for her own younger self. The novel is loosely based on experiences she had at her family's own Big House, Bowen's Court.
And then there's the text.
Lois is ambivalent about two men in the book, Gerald and the older married Hugo, and she physically recoils each time they touch her. She keeps wondering why she's not excited by their touch, mainly in letters to her best friend, Viola. So there's poor Gerald, doing his utmost to woo Lois, not knowing that she's thinking the whole time about how she just wants to go write to Viola about it:
While she could hold him thus -- before he receded or came too closely forward -- she wanted to run indoors and write to Viola. Viola would be certain to tell her she loved him
Look, if you're with a dude, and his getting all up on you makes you obsess about writing to your girlfriend, that is a sign from the universe.
Later she runs from Gerald --"he is so terribly there" (Bowen's italics) -- because she's expecting, with a "tearing feeling of expectation" a letter from Viola.
Sis. Come on. Let's talk.
Later, when older, unmarried Marda arrives, Lois follows her around, fascinated. Marda is glamorous and unmarried, and has broken engagements in her past. Lois, to whom Marda's bedroom door is closed (theme!), knocks for admittance and then sits watching Marda paint her nails, before, in all seriousness, showing Marda her etchings. Lois later sneaks into Marda's room (door again: closed) and, finding Marda's fur coat, puts it on and buries her face in the collar.
Okay.
In [b:The Hotel|625215|The Hotel|Elizabeth Bowen|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1219805584l/625215._SY75_.jpg|611572], the young heroine, struggling with her attraction to an older woman, also buries her face in the collar of the woman's fur coat.
I mean--
("She hoped for the proper agony, finding a coat she wanted...")
I swear these analyses write themselves.
Later, Lois and Marda take a trip to a decrepit old mill, and Yamaneki incisively codes their entering of it (sans Hugo, who wanders off in a huff) as weirdly erotic. While there, they encounter an IRA gunman with a (phallic) pistol, that goes off and injures Marda. So... heterosexuality. Sounds good.
Poor Lois.
As an orphan who's barely tolerated by her aunt and uncle, she's confined by Danielstown (and constantly escaping into the wild country or to army dances where veterans with shellshock throw sandwiches at her (men: this is not an effective way to woo women)) and to a large extent trapped in her dead mother's shadow as well.
She's hemmed in by women making terrible marriages -- her mother's to an Englishman, where she ends up dead; Marda's to another Englishman, where it's strongly hinted that she ends up bored out of her mind; Francie's to Hugo, where she ends up de-romantically (s)mothered; Livvy's to David Armstrong, where she ends up becoming a scandal -- and trying to talk herself into loving Gerald, mainly because he forces kisses on her and won't leave.
At the same time, Lois is an unlikely (and frankly unlikeable) heroine who acts as an agent of Danielstown's destruction. Where Francie lives in mortal terror of the roses getting in at the closed window, it's Lois who brings roses into Francie and Hugo's room and arranges them in a vase. It's Lois who brings Gerald into the house, and Lois who, if you become obsessed with the domestic architecture theme here, continues to open doors closed against her and leave them open in her wake.
And every time Lois leaves Danielstown she observes how rot is setting in around it, creeping up to it, and encroaching on it:
Looking down, it seemed to Lois they lived in a forest; space of lawns blotted out in the pressure and dusk of trees. She wondered they were not smothered; then wondered still more that they were not afraid...
Only the massed trees -- spread like a rug to dull some keenness, break some contact between self and senses perilous to the routine of living -- only the trees of the demesne were dark and exhaled darkness. Down among them, dusk would stream up the paths ahead, lie stagnant on lawns, would mount in the dank of garden, heightening the walls, dulling the borders as by a rain of ashes...
Seen from above, the house in its pit of trees seemed a very reservoir of obscurity; from the doors one must come out stained with it.
So at the end of the book Lois does the only sensible thing and runs away to France, leaving Danielstown to its fate.
Four stars. More matchsticks and uncomfortable chairs for everyone.
Glad we got that all cleared up.
-----
Original review:
I'm usually a huge Bowen fan, but this one left me just puzzled, more than anything else. There's a lot of casually appearing in doorways and picking up conversations that ostensibly began earlier, and a lot of conversations that consist solely of characters interrupting each other, or talking to themselves, or musing about the conversations they wish they were having, which aren't the ones the reader is currently following. A lot of things either clearly unsaid, opaquely unsaid or said in other rooms by other characters. Lots of matchsticks, Sebastian.
Actual. Matchsticks.
This leads to some fairly uneven pacing and a lot of confusing situations; by the end it felt like 200 pages of musing about interior furnishings, a minor relation's clumsiness and how self-conscious everyone should be, followed by 50 pages of Things Happening Quickly, and an abrupt ending.
It does, however, include a young woman burying her face in an older woman's fur collar, because Bowen.
That was an odd read.
Lois is 19, an orphan staying at the Big House of her family in Cork during the Irish Troubles. All around the house, families are persecuted, people are shot, yet at the House the grand life with parties, tennis games, and flirtations with English Officers, is not yet over.
The remarkable thing about this book is how it is able to blend it all together: personal coming of age, war, peace, love, the countryside and the very much divided Ireland with these Anglo-Irish families that are not as loyal to the crown as they could be.
I found many aspects of this novels unsatisfactory, the amount of characters confused me, the ambiguity and indecisiveness annoyed me, and yet this was a rewarding read where I learned a lot. It felt a bit like an Irish Downton Abbey to me without the emphasis on the servants.
4 Stars because some things could have been clearer, however, I might be at fault by not being educated enough in the nuances of Irish politics and struggles of that time.
Lois is 19, an orphan staying at the Big House of her family in Cork during the Irish Troubles. All around the house, families are persecuted, people are shot, yet at the House the grand life with parties, tennis games, and flirtations with English Officers, is not yet over.
The remarkable thing about this book is how it is able to blend it all together: personal coming of age, war, peace, love, the countryside and the very much divided Ireland with these Anglo-Irish families that are not as loyal to the crown as they could be.
I found many aspects of this novels unsatisfactory, the amount of characters confused me, the ambiguity and indecisiveness annoyed me, and yet this was a rewarding read where I learned a lot. It felt a bit like an Irish Downton Abbey to me without the emphasis on the servants.
4 Stars because some things could have been clearer, however, I might be at fault by not being educated enough in the nuances of Irish politics and struggles of that time.
But surely love wouldn't get so much talked about if there were not something in it?It was interesting, to say the least. However, I'd be lying if I said I understood everything going on in this book. Some of the dialogue lost me, other times the dry humour and anti-English sentiments much alike Derry Girls made me chuckle. Lois appeared to be one of the central characters but I did not entirely grasp that part until her romance with Gerald took center stage during the latter part of the novel. Can not wait to hear more about this novel and potentially clear certain things up during the seminar. Also, fingers crossed and I might end up in Cork during my stay abroad next semester. Fans of Downtown Abbey and Irish history/slice of life: this one's for you.
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
Jaren 20, en tijdens de Ierse onafhankelijkheidsstrijd probeert een rijkere familie uit een "big house" te leven alsof de tijden niet zo tumultueus zijn. De manier waarop verontrustende gebeurtenissen hun leven van tennispartijtjes en feestjes binnensluipen, is opvallend subtiel beschreven. Ook al weet iedereen dat het maar een kwestie van tijd is, en ook al kondigt een van de hoofdpersonages al lang op voorhand aan waarmee het boek eindigt, het einde komt toch als een verrassing aan.
Omdat ik zelf zo weinig weet uit dit hoofdstuk uit de Ierse geschiedenis, was het boek net iets te subtiel voor me, waardoor de ernst van de situatie te weinig tot me doordrong. Bovendien moet ik toegeven dat het niet 100 percent klikt met Bowens schrijfstijl: ze laat enorm veel weg (qua zinnen/beschrijvingen). Het is zo bedoeld uiteraard, en het creëert een bepaalde sfeer, maar het is vermoeiend lezen.
Kortom, ongetwijfeld een zeer waardevol boek, maar voor een andere lezer dan ik.
Omdat ik zelf zo weinig weet uit dit hoofdstuk uit de Ierse geschiedenis, was het boek net iets te subtiel voor me, waardoor de ernst van de situatie te weinig tot me doordrong. Bovendien moet ik toegeven dat het niet 100 percent klikt met Bowens schrijfstijl: ze laat enorm veel weg (qua zinnen/beschrijvingen). Het is zo bedoeld uiteraard, en het creëert een bepaalde sfeer, maar het is vermoeiend lezen.
Kortom, ongetwijfeld een zeer waardevol boek, maar voor een andere lezer dan ik.
Not as good as A House in Paris but a beautiful novel nonetheless.
Este es de esos libros en los que no pasa básicamente nada mientras, en realidad, está pasando todo. En plena guerra angloirlandesa, los Naylor invitan a los jóvenes oficiales británicos a bailes, tés y partidos de tenis, envueltos en una vorágine de cotidianeidad aristocrática que contrasta mucho con el período convulso y violento que Irlanda está viviendo. Por eso, casi podíamos decir que es una novela costumbrista, con un ritmo pausado y agradable, solo que no lo es, porque en todo momento se percibe esa tensión subyacente que el lector sabe que va a explotar por algún lado.
La prosa de Bowen es barroca y, a veces, hace que pierdas el hilo, pero es su segunda novela, escrita cuando era muy joven, de manera que intuyo que ese lenguaje un tanto pretencioso se iría convirtiendo con el tiempo en una narrativa madura y certera. Me parece que Bowen tiene un enorme potencial en la descripción más íntima de sus personajes, especialmente de las mujeres, pues el personaje de Lois, sus dudas e inseguridades me parecen atemporales.
Una buena lectura, en general. No mi favorita de los últimos meses, pero buena.
La prosa de Bowen es barroca y, a veces, hace que pierdas el hilo, pero es su segunda novela, escrita cuando era muy joven, de manera que intuyo que ese lenguaje un tanto pretencioso se iría convirtiendo con el tiempo en una narrativa madura y certera. Me parece que Bowen tiene un enorme potencial en la descripción más íntima de sus personajes, especialmente de las mujeres, pues el personaje de Lois, sus dudas e inseguridades me parecen atemporales.
Una buena lectura, en general. No mi favorita de los últimos meses, pero buena.
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Written in 1928, about the Ireland of 1920: the word last in the title is very important, though subtly explored through the story. The central characters are an Anglo-Irish family, the Naylors, who have lived in Co. Cork, in a 'Big House', for generations. The country is full of British troops, attempting to quash the IRA: a guerrilla war is underway, but the Naylors and Anglo-Irish families like them are doing their best to ignore this. This is the atmosphere in which Lois is spending her summer: she has just left school, and, an orphan, lives with her aunt and uncle. Lois, like the Naylors, is coping with the war by pretending it isn't happening: she sees herself as Irish, and is frustrated by the British soldiers, but also goes to dances with them, plays tennis with them, and begins to form attachments to them.
In this novel, Bowen cleverly and subtly explores Lois's naivete against the background of the Anglo-Irish's detemination not to see what is happening, and her lost innocence against the loss of a particular way of life and kind of people. She points out the hypocrisy of both the Anglo-Irish and the British troops, and does not seem to be on anyone's side: instead she captures the atmosphere of this hot, dangerous September in a country that is in the middle of turmoil.
Bowen's writer is astute and poignant, but often very funny. She uses witty, almost surreal details, and captures the absurdity of day-to-day life, as well as people's personal quirks. I rarely type out quotes from novels, but this paragraph, describing a dinner party, amused me so much I wanted to quote it here. I couldn't bear to cut it down: it describes an old Anglo-Irish house holder at supper with his daughter, Livvy, and her friend, Lois, and two officers from the army:
Highly recommended: a very accomplished novel, but also a sensitive and funny one.
In this novel, Bowen cleverly and subtly explores Lois's naivete against the background of the Anglo-Irish's detemination not to see what is happening, and her lost innocence against the loss of a particular way of life and kind of people. She points out the hypocrisy of both the Anglo-Irish and the British troops, and does not seem to be on anyone's side: instead she captures the atmosphere of this hot, dangerous September in a country that is in the middle of turmoil.
Bowen's writer is astute and poignant, but often very funny. She uses witty, almost surreal details, and captures the absurdity of day-to-day life, as well as people's personal quirks. I rarely type out quotes from novels, but this paragraph, describing a dinner party, amused me so much I wanted to quote it here. I couldn't bear to cut it down: it describes an old Anglo-Irish house holder at supper with his daughter, Livvy, and her friend, Lois, and two officers from the army:
Mr Thompson did not entertain very much, but Lois remembered once staying to supper there, early that summer, with David and Gerald. [...] Mr Thompson's dining-room looked out on to trees, that fanned little gusts of light over the table then closed again in green darkness; it smelt of meat and there was an enormous pilastered mahogany sideboard like the front of a temple, inside which they could hear mice running about. Mr Thompson was silent - from fear, they thought, rather than disapproval - he kept drawing long black horsehairs from the seat of his chair and laying them out on the cloth. At each hair, David and Gerald leaned forward and opened their mouths to speak. But Mr Thompson went down in his collar so that they could not: they spoke to each other. And Lois, looking under her lids, had marvelled at this fortress of many opinions. His sister Miss Thompson was present, but she was deaf. The dining-room was dark red, with a smoky ceiling, and Gerald said afterwards he had felt like a disease in a liver. When the blancmange came in it lay down with a sob and Miss Thompson frowned at it. 'Death of the cow,' thought Lois, and saved this up. Livvy kept looking warningly at her friends, but they were all polite. Some ducks filed in a the French window; the guests flapped with their napkins, but Mr Thompson said, 'Oh, let them be,' and sure enough the ducks went round the table with their usual urgent look and out by the window again. Mr Thompson got up and shut out the May air. 'Times change for the worse,' he said to Gerald, who agreed with him so emphatically that David had to repeat the interchange to the anxious Miss Thompson. No wonder Livvy found home dull.
Highly recommended: a very accomplished novel, but also a sensitive and funny one.