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3.45 AVERAGE
3.45 AVERAGE
This was quite an unusual book. I was expecting more from it and it ended up just being weird.
This was Elizabeth Bowen's own favourite book. Superficially the plot is that of a "rose-coloured" 1920s love story, set in and around Danielstown, one of the many 18th century Big Houses of Ireland. Surrounded by landscaped gardens and tennis courts, its vast demesne stretches to infinity for miles and miles of fields and streams. The city of Cork is somewhere far away. This house, with its rooms and staircases and windows, and its many servants hidden away, is really the main protagonist of the novel.
In an incessant whirl of arriving and departing guests, the owners of the estate and come and go, visiting other Big Houses and gossiping elegantly about one another. Nobody actually "does" anything; the nearest any of them come to "work" is giving the day's instructions to the cook, or calling a manservant to take some letters into town for the post. They exist in a condition of physical and cultural detachment and they choose their acquaintances carefully so that they are of the desired social standing.
The heroine, Lois, is a vaguely modern young woman - but that's only because she reads magazines and newspapers that are delivered to the house or are left behind by guests, and because she has a visitor who tells her about the outside world. Her detachment from reality is deliberate, and is carefully maintained, because for Lois it would be inelegant to take too much interest in current affairs - though even she can sense that Ireland is in the turmoil of the war of independence and that revolutionaries are roaming the countryside. Reality is coming to destroy these people, their Big Houses, their way of life, and their patrician detachment. They are only vaguely aware of it and do their best not to talk about it.
Bowen's prose is tremendous: abrupt, surprising, going in unexpected directions, fresh and beautiful like the flowers and landscapes she so often describes. As an author she has the same detachment as her characters and like Lois, she keeps her modernity at arm's length as something one knows about but tries not to be too much affected by (there is a faintly horrified remark about young women going to work on crowded trams in faraway Dublin). She writes from a distance, observing people she obviously knew well with a faintly sardonic sense, whose behaviour is ridiculous and often very funny.
In his 2019 critique of Bowen's short stories (in the New York Review) John Banville - whose novels have a satirical detachment of their own - noted that "something is always lurking beneath the exquisitely limned surface of Bowen’s fictional world". In this case the thing that's lurking is the war just outside the gates, which somehow seems to be impinging on this elegant Irish summer of tennis and afternoon tea as it fades into autumn. Gerald is a British officer commanding the local Black and Tans and Lois makes the mistake of falling in love with him. The dénouement, as you'd expect, is disastrous not only for Lois and Gerald, but for the whole way of life of an ascendant class that is about to lose control.
The novel began with an arrival and it ends elegantly with a final departure. Truly this was the Last September and on reaching the final page, this reader was so moved and had been so engrossed that he found himself shedding a tear. One of the great modern novels of Irish literature.
In an incessant whirl of arriving and departing guests, the owners of the estate and come and go, visiting other Big Houses and gossiping elegantly about one another. Nobody actually "does" anything; the nearest any of them come to "work" is giving the day's instructions to the cook, or calling a manservant to take some letters into town for the post. They exist in a condition of physical and cultural detachment and they choose their acquaintances carefully so that they are of the desired social standing.
The heroine, Lois, is a vaguely modern young woman - but that's only because she reads magazines and newspapers that are delivered to the house or are left behind by guests, and because she has a visitor who tells her about the outside world. Her detachment from reality is deliberate, and is carefully maintained, because for Lois it would be inelegant to take too much interest in current affairs - though even she can sense that Ireland is in the turmoil of the war of independence and that revolutionaries are roaming the countryside. Reality is coming to destroy these people, their Big Houses, their way of life, and their patrician detachment. They are only vaguely aware of it and do their best not to talk about it.
Bowen's prose is tremendous: abrupt, surprising, going in unexpected directions, fresh and beautiful like the flowers and landscapes she so often describes. As an author she has the same detachment as her characters and like Lois, she keeps her modernity at arm's length as something one knows about but tries not to be too much affected by (there is a faintly horrified remark about young women going to work on crowded trams in faraway Dublin). She writes from a distance, observing people she obviously knew well with a faintly sardonic sense, whose behaviour is ridiculous and often very funny.
In his 2019 critique of Bowen's short stories (in the New York Review) John Banville - whose novels have a satirical detachment of their own - noted that "something is always lurking beneath the exquisitely limned surface of Bowen’s fictional world". In this case the thing that's lurking is the war just outside the gates, which somehow seems to be impinging on this elegant Irish summer of tennis and afternoon tea as it fades into autumn. Gerald is a British officer commanding the local Black and Tans and Lois makes the mistake of falling in love with him. The dénouement, as you'd expect, is disastrous not only for Lois and Gerald, but for the whole way of life of an ascendant class that is about to lose control.
The novel began with an arrival and it ends elegantly with a final departure. Truly this was the Last September and on reaching the final page, this reader was so moved and had been so engrossed that he found himself shedding a tear. One of the great modern novels of Irish literature.
funny
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I love to find mention of books within other books.
So it was that when I recently read [b:The Awkward Age|551498|The Awkward Age|Henry James|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1467165869s/551498.jpg|909425] by Henry James, I paid particular attention to a blue-covered novel that had one of the characters' names inscribed in it. I watched as the novel was passed around, influencing the fate of several characters in the process, and rewarding me for paying attention. That episode reminded me of other stories in which books within books had moved the plot along: [b:A Room with a View|3087|A Room with a View|E.M. Forster|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388781285s/3087.jpg|4574872], for example, where a red-covered novel abandoned in a garden changes the course of the heroine's life.
A novel gets passed from one character to another in [b:The Last September|195990|The Last September|Elizabeth Bowen|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1504711869s/195990.jpg|2054543] too, and though there's no name inscribed on it - as was the case with the blue-covered book in 'The Awkward Age' - there is a discussion about such an inscription, which has to be an interesting coincidence.
However, in spite of that coincidence, I wasn't immediately reminded of 'The Last September' when I was thinking about books that play roles in other books. If I reached up to the book shelf the other day, where [a:Elizabeth Bowen|52578|Elizabeth Bowen|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1457373455p2/52578.jpg] is perched between [a:William Trevor|16002|William Trevor|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1269201140p2/16002.jpg] and [a:Molly Keane|247564|Molly Keane|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1417129877p2/247564.jpg], it was because a character trapped on the threshold of adulthood in 'The Awkward Age' had reminded me of a similar character in Bowen's novel. I had only intended to remind myself of the character's name (Lois Farquar, as it turns out), but I ended up rereading the novel all the way through. And what a pleasure it was, from the opening to the closing sentences! I remember liking it when I first read it but I enjoyed it even more second time round. Perhaps reading so much Henry James recently has helped me appreciate Elizabeth Bowen's early twentieth century style better.
I enjoyed the subtle foreshadowing: Behind the trees, pressing in from the open and empty country like an invasion, the orange bright sky crept and smouldered.
I noted the amount of things that are implied or left unsaid: There was to be no opportunity for what he must not say to be rather painfully not said.
But I particularly savoured the descriptions: Day, still coming in from the fields by the south windows, was stored in the mirrors, in the sheen of the wallpaper.
In fact Bowen writes as if she's painting a picture or, better still, making a very beautiful film.
How's this for an opening shot:
About six o'clock the sound of a motor, collected out of the wide country and narrowed under the trees of the avenue, brought the household out in excitement onto the steps. Up among the beeches, a thin iron gate twanged; the car slid out from a net of shadow, down the slope to the house.
As greetings are exchanged with the long-awaited visitors, Bowen turns her camera on Lois, standing apart from the rest of the characters:
In those days, girls wore crisp white skirts and transparent blouses clotted with white flowers; ribbons, threaded through with a view to appearance, appeared over their shoulders. So that Lois stood at the top of the steps looking cool and fresh; she knew how fresh she must look, like other young girls, and clasping her elbows tightly behind her back, tried hard to conceal her embarrassment. The dogs came pattering out from the hall and stood beside her; above, the vast façade of the house stared coldly over its mounting lawns...The car with the luggage turned and went around the back, deeply scoring the gravel..She wished she could freeze the moment and keep it always...
Bowen has frozen that moment perfectly. The crisp white skirt and the muslin blouse will never yellow with age, and future readers will hear again the motor's roar coming through the tunnel of trees, the crunch of those heavy tyres on the gravel.
Though I've referenced film and camera angles, I know they are only metaphors. The film is playing on the page before our eyes; the words are doing the job of the camera. And just as in the best movies, the themes of the entire novel are flagged in the opening scene. The girl, though on the verge of adulthood, is isolated from the others because she's not yet married, not yet initiated into adult secrets; she is more comfortable with the dogs than with the visitors, though she's painfully self-conscious and awkward about that verdant verge she's isolated upon.
And the house, which is as much a main character as Lois herself, has its future outlined in two simple words: stared coldly. They are a chilly breath from the future: this is the last September of Lois's innocence and the last September the house will welcome visitors.
You'll have to read the book yourself to see how artfully Elizabeth Bowen fills in the story she has sketched in that powerful opening.
But what about the book within the book, I hear you say? What was its significance?
As was the case with the blue-covered novel in the Henry James book I mentioned earlier, the book in this story was relevant to the theme of the innocence of girls of an awkward age. Lois's cousin Laurence gives the book, not to Lois, but to a more sophisticated family friend. Alhough he is not much older than Lois, Laurence treats his cousin like a silly child and wouldn't dream of giving her a book that might corrupt her. Bowen frequently uses Laurence to contrast the freedoms young men enjoy with the restrictions placed on young women like Lois. At the end of September, Laurence will continue his studies at Oxford but, at least at the start of the book, nothing so purposeful awaits Lois - she has no university studies to return to, no plans for any future occupation. She's adrift.
…………………...............
Though he isn't present in many scenes in the book, and the point of view mostly belongs to Lois or to certain other characters, Bowen still gives Laurence some great lines, including this little speech which nicely wraps up the themes of this review: Last term I dropped a cigarette case into the Cher, from the bridge at Parson's Pleasure. It was a gold one, flat and thin and curved, for a not excessive smoker. It was from the days when they wore opera cloaks...It was very period, very virginal; I called it Henry James...
……………………………………………
The book Laurence didn't give Lois had another significance which I couldn't have guessed until I started reading it. Yes, I immediately bought Laurence's book after I'd finished 'The Last September' and right now I'm a third of the way through it.
I'll fill you in on the further significances I discovered when I finish it. It's called [b:South Wind|1198855|South Wind|Norman Douglas|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1181816741s/1198855.jpg|1186973] and it's by [a:Norman Douglas|1653|Norman Douglas|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1259969485p2/1653.jpg] .
………………
Later edit. I finished South Wind. Wow!
So it was that when I recently read [b:The Awkward Age|551498|The Awkward Age|Henry James|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1467165869s/551498.jpg|909425] by Henry James, I paid particular attention to a blue-covered novel that had one of the characters' names inscribed in it. I watched as the novel was passed around, influencing the fate of several characters in the process, and rewarding me for paying attention. That episode reminded me of other stories in which books within books had moved the plot along: [b:A Room with a View|3087|A Room with a View|E.M. Forster|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388781285s/3087.jpg|4574872], for example, where a red-covered novel abandoned in a garden changes the course of the heroine's life.
A novel gets passed from one character to another in [b:The Last September|195990|The Last September|Elizabeth Bowen|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1504711869s/195990.jpg|2054543] too, and though there's no name inscribed on it - as was the case with the blue-covered book in 'The Awkward Age' - there is a discussion about such an inscription, which has to be an interesting coincidence.
However, in spite of that coincidence, I wasn't immediately reminded of 'The Last September' when I was thinking about books that play roles in other books. If I reached up to the book shelf the other day, where [a:Elizabeth Bowen|52578|Elizabeth Bowen|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1457373455p2/52578.jpg] is perched between [a:William Trevor|16002|William Trevor|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1269201140p2/16002.jpg] and [a:Molly Keane|247564|Molly Keane|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1417129877p2/247564.jpg], it was because a character trapped on the threshold of adulthood in 'The Awkward Age' had reminded me of a similar character in Bowen's novel. I had only intended to remind myself of the character's name (Lois Farquar, as it turns out), but I ended up rereading the novel all the way through. And what a pleasure it was, from the opening to the closing sentences! I remember liking it when I first read it but I enjoyed it even more second time round. Perhaps reading so much Henry James recently has helped me appreciate Elizabeth Bowen's early twentieth century style better.
I enjoyed the subtle foreshadowing: Behind the trees, pressing in from the open and empty country like an invasion, the orange bright sky crept and smouldered.
I noted the amount of things that are implied or left unsaid: There was to be no opportunity for what he must not say to be rather painfully not said.
But I particularly savoured the descriptions: Day, still coming in from the fields by the south windows, was stored in the mirrors, in the sheen of the wallpaper.
In fact Bowen writes as if she's painting a picture or, better still, making a very beautiful film.
How's this for an opening shot:
About six o'clock the sound of a motor, collected out of the wide country and narrowed under the trees of the avenue, brought the household out in excitement onto the steps. Up among the beeches, a thin iron gate twanged; the car slid out from a net of shadow, down the slope to the house.
As greetings are exchanged with the long-awaited visitors, Bowen turns her camera on Lois, standing apart from the rest of the characters:
In those days, girls wore crisp white skirts and transparent blouses clotted with white flowers; ribbons, threaded through with a view to appearance, appeared over their shoulders. So that Lois stood at the top of the steps looking cool and fresh; she knew how fresh she must look, like other young girls, and clasping her elbows tightly behind her back, tried hard to conceal her embarrassment. The dogs came pattering out from the hall and stood beside her; above, the vast façade of the house stared coldly over its mounting lawns...The car with the luggage turned and went around the back, deeply scoring the gravel..She wished she could freeze the moment and keep it always...
Bowen has frozen that moment perfectly. The crisp white skirt and the muslin blouse will never yellow with age, and future readers will hear again the motor's roar coming through the tunnel of trees, the crunch of those heavy tyres on the gravel.
Though I've referenced film and camera angles, I know they are only metaphors. The film is playing on the page before our eyes; the words are doing the job of the camera. And just as in the best movies, the themes of the entire novel are flagged in the opening scene. The girl, though on the verge of adulthood, is isolated from the others because she's not yet married, not yet initiated into adult secrets; she is more comfortable with the dogs than with the visitors, though she's painfully self-conscious and awkward about that verdant verge she's isolated upon.
And the house, which is as much a main character as Lois herself, has its future outlined in two simple words: stared coldly. They are a chilly breath from the future: this is the last September of Lois's innocence and the last September the house will welcome visitors.
You'll have to read the book yourself to see how artfully Elizabeth Bowen fills in the story she has sketched in that powerful opening.
But what about the book within the book, I hear you say? What was its significance?
As was the case with the blue-covered novel in the Henry James book I mentioned earlier, the book in this story was relevant to the theme of the innocence of girls of an awkward age. Lois's cousin Laurence gives the book, not to Lois, but to a more sophisticated family friend. Alhough he is not much older than Lois, Laurence treats his cousin like a silly child and wouldn't dream of giving her a book that might corrupt her. Bowen frequently uses Laurence to contrast the freedoms young men enjoy with the restrictions placed on young women like Lois. At the end of September, Laurence will continue his studies at Oxford but, at least at the start of the book, nothing so purposeful awaits Lois - she has no university studies to return to, no plans for any future occupation. She's adrift.
…………………...............
Though he isn't present in many scenes in the book, and the point of view mostly belongs to Lois or to certain other characters, Bowen still gives Laurence some great lines, including this little speech which nicely wraps up the themes of this review: Last term I dropped a cigarette case into the Cher, from the bridge at Parson's Pleasure. It was a gold one, flat and thin and curved, for a not excessive smoker. It was from the days when they wore opera cloaks...It was very period, very virginal; I called it Henry James...
……………………………………………
The book Laurence didn't give Lois had another significance which I couldn't have guessed until I started reading it. Yes, I immediately bought Laurence's book after I'd finished 'The Last September' and right now I'm a third of the way through it.
I'll fill you in on the further significances I discovered when I finish it. It's called [b:South Wind|1198855|South Wind|Norman Douglas|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1181816741s/1198855.jpg|1186973] and it's by [a:Norman Douglas|1653|Norman Douglas|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1259969485p2/1653.jpg] .
………………
Later edit. I finished South Wind. Wow!
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
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:
Yes
challenging
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
reflective
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
A deeply internal novel about an unsettled society, a way of life on the verge of disappearing, and a paper-thin whirl of gaiety and social comedy that the threat of violence lurks beneath. The prose is incredibly dense, sometimes to the point of being impenetrable, but sometimes wonderfully evocative and descriptive. I'd definitely be interested in reading more of Bowen's work. I did also find myself wishing that I'd read up on the historical context a little more before starting because the book drops the reader right in and assumes that they understand Anglo-Irish society. Something I would recommend to a certain kind of reader, with a handful of caveats.
Not much is happening except for Lois' cyclical indecision about who she is and what she wants. I usually love a meandering plot, but I don't like the characters very much.