The Last September (original 1929; edition 2000)

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 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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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 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". ( )

The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen; (4*)

Elizabeth Bowen’s The Last September is a thoughtful, internal, and deep novel about Anglo-Irish identity during the Irish War of Independence. I sometimes find Bowen to be a difficult read but always worthwhile even if it’s just for her marvelous language.
I was struck by the fact that nothing much seems to happen during the first three quarters of the book . Lives go on as usual, interpersonal tensions flare and subside unrelated to political events. Parties are held, visits are made, engagements are made and broken. The underlying tensions run in the background but are unremitting. The mood is one of stasis, a kind of intolerable suspension that is ever present at the edge of one’s field of vision. Bowen has deliberately cultivated a sense of relative banality hovering over an abyss, and as the novel moves forward without this tension being resolved, it inexorably builds. Additional tensions arise as one becomes aware of the differences between the Anglo-Irish and the British military, each of which misunderstands the other.

Bowen writes convincingly and beautifully. Her prose flows and is evocative of both Irish civilization and Irish wilderness. She is sensitive to the nuances of dialogue and class, convincingly portraying the differences between her characters. ( )

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 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. ( )

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 Henry James.