The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen

The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen

I've read this a handful of times and will probably read it again at some point next year, but I wanted to mention it now, as a novel I can recommend very highly.

It's a book that captures a particular mood so successfully, with minimal effort – the mood in this case being the dislocated ennui and self-absorption of a landed gentry that wilfully ignores all that is going on around it and clings instead to a lifestyle that is desperately out of place. The fact that the book is set during the Irish War of Independence in the early 1920s remains resolutely in the background, yet it suffuses the whole book with a dark sense of foreboding. The atmosphere is one of detachment and a refusal to acknowledge a reality beyond the walls of (relative) privilege. It's also an incredibly witty book at times.

What interests me in this context is the extent to which the Anglo-Irish experience of the 1920s can be related to the rest of the world at the time – very little, I think, since the fight for independence and subsequent civil war in Ireland was not reflected elsewhere at the time, and it took another 20 years and a further world war to dismantle the British Empire.

But what of the quasi-aristocratic lifestyle of the Naylor family? How can this compare with the corresponding class in England at the time? How special was the situation of the Anglo-Irish? Looked down upon by the English, ignored by the government in London, yet also despised by the native Irish, it seems to me to have been a class of its own, suspended in aspic… I'm hoping that some other books from 1929 can help me to either draw some parallels or dismiss them.

And finally, I'm interested in the depiction of love and romance – how does Lois' experience compare with that described in other novels of the time?

Has anybody else read The Last September?

Great introduction, Carolyn. I have only read The Death of the Heart.

Presently reading Love's Civil War by edited by Victoria Glendinning which is the diaries/letters of Bowen and Charles Ritchie - but this does not even start until 1942. (Worthwhile read so far)

This will likely be the first one I read, as I have a copy in my TBR stacks. There is a decent film version out; I saw it a few years ago.

The Anglo-Irish have a strange political and literary history. I just finished teaching Swift's A Modest Proposal, which, although written about 150 years earlier, deals with their situation. Swift, himself Anglo-Irish, had a lot to say about the indulgence of his class, and I'll bet some of those issues were still alive and well in 1929. And Oscar Wilde's mother was a strong advocate for Irish independence; the Wildes, too, were Anglo-Irish.

My great-grandmother was also of the class; she came to the US from Belfast in the early 1890s. I'll be interested to learn a bit more about them.

Written much later, but Troubles by J. G. Farrell is a great look at Ireland just before the 20s (1919 to be exact).

I love A Modest Proposal! Thanks for the heads-up on this one and the great background info, Carolyn. Like Cariola, I also saw the film version some years ago. The movie was good, but I'm sure the book is better - Bowen writes so beautifully!

I just finished The Last September. Often it reminded me, in its style of wit, of Tom Stoppard. At other times, I found certain sentences impenetrable. Perhaps I wasn't concentrating hard enough.

I've had this one waiting in the wings for awhile. I've been extremely lucky with ER books lately, which has kept pushing it back. As soon as I finish the two on top of my stack and the next one on its way, I hope to get to The Last September. (I did see the film version a few years back.)