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3.45 AVERAGE
3.45 AVERAGE
Subtil però molt potent. Comença amb aire de Jane Austen però de seguida te n'adones de que és molt més terrible tot plegat. La seva veu troba la força en la ironia. Una classe amb els dies comptats que no va voler acceptar el que ja ningú no podia aturar: com conciliar la ment amb el coneixement d'estar ocupant una terra que no és teva. Emfatitza molt la idea d'aïllament i soledat. No tenir arrels. Quina bona escriptora.
An Anglo-Irish family lives in a large country house, Danielstown in County Cork. In 1920, Lois sees her long life stretching before her with nothing much pleasing to look forward to, her malaise is palpable, as those on the cusp of womanhood can sometimes feel. While she longs for freedom, the British way of living in Ireland around Lois is under attack and while the military in the area enlivens the social scene, a deeper fear still underlines even the details of daily life. Danielstown, towering over all, is a character itself, as visitors come and stay and go again, bringing new drama to the scene. The Last September is a portrait of a time and place and group of people whose heyday was slowly coming to a close, despite the backyard tennis parties and dances with the militia making it seem as though such a thing was impossible.
So, this isn't a fast moving book. It took me way longer to read than it's 300 pages should have. Part of that is that it is SO BEAUTIFULLY written, Bowen's language is precise and so intentional, descriptive with a lovely turn of phrase. It begs to be read slowly. But also, the plot, such as it is, is just plodding because in these large country houses, there just isn't much happening. People eat meals and discuss the weather. They talk about neighbors and visitors, they gossip about sweater patterns, who is engaged to whom and the languages one might learn in one's spare time. In between, though, there is real loss and pain, acknowledgement about how little is in one's control as well as so much disgruntlement with a life that is pretty dang swell, all things considered. Lois is a frustrating character, she's so melancholy and unsure of what will make her happy, it's hard to feel compassionate towards her. I'm really glad I stuck to this one, though, because it gave me a sense of Anglo-Irish life during this time period and because there really is a lot to appreciate in the writing.
So, this isn't a fast moving book. It took me way longer to read than it's 300 pages should have. Part of that is that it is SO BEAUTIFULLY written, Bowen's language is precise and so intentional, descriptive with a lovely turn of phrase. It begs to be read slowly. But also, the plot, such as it is, is just plodding because in these large country houses, there just isn't much happening. People eat meals and discuss the weather. They talk about neighbors and visitors, they gossip about sweater patterns, who is engaged to whom and the languages one might learn in one's spare time. In between, though, there is real loss and pain, acknowledgement about how little is in one's control as well as so much disgruntlement with a life that is pretty dang swell, all things considered. Lois is a frustrating character, she's so melancholy and unsure of what will make her happy, it's hard to feel compassionate towards her. I'm really glad I stuck to this one, though, because it gave me a sense of Anglo-Irish life during this time period and because there really is a lot to appreciate in the writing.
exquisite writer, I just wish she was a little less vague.
This book had some of the strangest prose I ever read. There were times I still wasn't sure what happened, even after reading a section several times. And I wasn't crazy about the ending, at least what I think happened at the ending . . . Kind of a strange book.
The Big House era is coming to an end in Ireland and Bowen captures the moment of collapse and the sense of entropy where ‘it seems the same time all day’ and pointlessness of the world of the Anglo-Irish Ascendency classes. It’s a novel of destruction and preservation as Bowen gives us a record of her class in its dying days. The Naylors, Trents, Vermonts and Montmorencys carry on regardless with their dinner evenings, tennis parties and various social obligations with relative indifference to the violent backdrop of national unrest following the war of independence. Any little incursions of danger are met with a sense of excitement and adventure ‘wouldn't’ it be a rag if they tried to fire in the window while we were dancing’ - an opportunity to use the African assegais on display in the hall. It’s a novel of perspective and distance, of varying vistas and positions of observation. The big house looms over its inhabitants, figures move about the garden ant-like, the mountain, in turn, looms over the house and on the mountain, secretive men in trenchcoats - dangerous patriots or Black and Tans - watch the activities of Danielstown. Goodbyes are so distant as at the little end of a telescope, the Anglo-Irish gentry is at a certain remove in terms of lifestyle, politics and moral standards from the English upper middle-classes; characters are distant from one another and things left unsaid go sour inside them. The house is full of mirrors and characters observing themselves go unobserved by others and vice versa. Themes of scale and perspective are indicative of other modernist Irish writers like Joyce who were trying to represent the geography of a rapidly changing island. The sense of decay in The Last September is palpable and manifests in incomplete sentences, dying pink flowers shadowed with blue as by an intuition of death, a dead woman’s trunk rotting in the attic, the smell of mould in the drawing-room, the mill ruins and rain having washed all the markings off the court, all point toward deterioration; the past giving way to an unknown future. Incidentally, the line of succession is further undermined by the lack of progeny. Sterility is a major theme in the novel where children are de trop.
Beautifully written
Beautifully written
No, I just found this incredibly dull. Honestly, I don't intend to read novels about rich, dull people; but there are just so MANY about, and it can be hard to avoid them.
Set in Ireland in 1920, during the Troubles, this novel is restrained, elliptical, and self-conscious. It features a bunch of wealthy Irish and British folks living in a country house, having dances and tennis parties, while all around them, the Irish and British fight for control of the country. The prevailing myth among this crowd is that the British have come in to save the Irish from themselves.
In the course of this slow-moving novel, we gradually get an idea of all the characters’ moods and pretensions. The main character is a young woman, Lois, living with her Aunt Myra and Uncle Richard. She doesn’t quite know what to do next, and is trying hard not to be too predictable and ordinary. She goes out with soldiers, and finally decides she has fallen in love with one of them, since he’s rather more definite about being in love with her. However, her Aunt Myra finds him unsuitable, and manipulates the situation to break them up.
The final few pages break up the whole scene, by killing off Lois’ soldier-lover, and burning down the country house. The writing is quite dramatic for a few pages. After I finished the novel, I went back and read the beginning again, and I picked up more of the understated subtext the second time around.
Some of the writing is beautiful, while some of it is a bit too precious. Here are some of the lines I liked best:
< Vague presence, barely a silhouette, the west light sifting into her fluffy hair and lace wrappings so that she half melted, she gave so little answer to one's inquiry that one did not know how to approach. >
< Sir Richard, touching his tie vaguely, wandered around the room, displacing with some irritation the little tables that seemed to spring up in his path, in the pent-up silence of a powerful talker not yet in gear. >
< Her eyes, long and soft-coloured, had the intense brimming wandering look of a puppy’s; in repose her lips met doubtfully, in a never determined line, so that she never seemed to have quite finished speaking. >
< Mrs. Vermont opened her mouth to tell Mrs. Carey the latest Ford story, then checked herself because in Ireland they seemed to like Fords so seriously. She observed instead, “All this is terrible for you all, isn’t it? I do think you’re so sporting the way you just stay where you are and keep going on. Who would ever have thought of the Irish turning out so disloyal – I mean, of course, the lower classes! I remember Mother saying in 1916 – you know, when that dreadful rebellion broke out – she said, ‘This has been a shock to me; I never shall feel the same about the Irish again!’ You see, she had brought us all up as kiddies to be so keen on the Irish and Irish songs. I still have a little bog oak pig she brought me back from an exhibition. She always said they were the most humorous people in the world, and with hearts of gold. Though of course we had none of us ever been in Ireland.” >
In the course of this slow-moving novel, we gradually get an idea of all the characters’ moods and pretensions. The main character is a young woman, Lois, living with her Aunt Myra and Uncle Richard. She doesn’t quite know what to do next, and is trying hard not to be too predictable and ordinary. She goes out with soldiers, and finally decides she has fallen in love with one of them, since he’s rather more definite about being in love with her. However, her Aunt Myra finds him unsuitable, and manipulates the situation to break them up.
The final few pages break up the whole scene, by killing off Lois’ soldier-lover, and burning down the country house. The writing is quite dramatic for a few pages. After I finished the novel, I went back and read the beginning again, and I picked up more of the understated subtext the second time around.
Some of the writing is beautiful, while some of it is a bit too precious. Here are some of the lines I liked best:
< Vague presence, barely a silhouette, the west light sifting into her fluffy hair and lace wrappings so that she half melted, she gave so little answer to one's inquiry that one did not know how to approach. >
< Sir Richard, touching his tie vaguely, wandered around the room, displacing with some irritation the little tables that seemed to spring up in his path, in the pent-up silence of a powerful talker not yet in gear. >
< Her eyes, long and soft-coloured, had the intense brimming wandering look of a puppy’s; in repose her lips met doubtfully, in a never determined line, so that she never seemed to have quite finished speaking. >
< Mrs. Vermont opened her mouth to tell Mrs. Carey the latest Ford story, then checked herself because in Ireland they seemed to like Fords so seriously. She observed instead, “All this is terrible for you all, isn’t it? I do think you’re so sporting the way you just stay where you are and keep going on. Who would ever have thought of the Irish turning out so disloyal – I mean, of course, the lower classes! I remember Mother saying in 1916 – you know, when that dreadful rebellion broke out – she said, ‘This has been a shock to me; I never shall feel the same about the Irish again!’ You see, she had brought us all up as kiddies to be so keen on the Irish and Irish songs. I still have a little bog oak pig she brought me back from an exhibition. She always said they were the most humorous people in the world, and with hearts of gold. Though of course we had none of us ever been in Ireland.” >
I'm so glad I read this book. But I find Bowen's style challenging. I read a lot of 18th, 19th, and 20th-century British and Irish authors. Something about her word choices and her ways of talking about nature....they leave me a bit stumped. People's emotions are described in such vague and dense language; it's hard to really know what she's getting at.
p. 119: "But he, prey to a constant self-reproach, was a born lover; conscious of cycles in him, springs and autumns of desire and disenchantment, and of the immediate pausing seasons, bland or frigid, eaten at either margin by the past or coming shadows of change." ????? I find this difficult, and there's a lot like that.
A classic in the genre of the Irish "big house" novel.
p. 119: "But he, prey to a constant self-reproach, was a born lover; conscious of cycles in him, springs and autumns of desire and disenchantment, and of the immediate pausing seasons, bland or frigid, eaten at either margin by the past or coming shadows of change." ????? I find this difficult, and there's a lot like that.
A classic in the genre of the Irish "big house" novel.
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character