The Last September Paperback – March 14, 2000

With prose like an old intricate tapestry, Bowen spins her tale. Obviously her writing is not everyone's cup of tea. Just dont bother reading the first review, which is more like a synopsis. Its is kind of pathetic that people think writing a review is akin to a BOOK REPORT or even worse an essay. Spare us your perception of the gory details and spoilers.

My distaste for Elizabeth Bowen and Lois, the self-obsessed protagonist of her novel, <i> The Last September </i>, set in the face of the anti-colonial turmoil of the War for Irish Independence, is not misinformed. The character’s Anglo-Irish superiority and willful obliviousness outrages me because Bowen portrays it as entirely natural and without irony, even with an elegiac wistfulfulness that sets my teeth on edge. Lois, one could argue like the rest of her family who are all virtually unaffected by the violence outside the walls of their estate, prefers her own fantasies to reality. Am I guilty of similar transgressions when I become immersed in my work, my life, at the expense of all else? The idea makes me shudder. Bowen seems to take in stride, as if silly girls are destined to become silly women, as if that is the proper way of the world and there are no other possibilities for them.Lois is infatuated with Gerald, a British Black and Tan, but she also briefly imagines being in love with a married friend of her uncle’s, Mr. Montmorency, who literally could have been her father as he was once in love with Lois’ mother. She is fond of making outlandish pronouncements such as, "I hate women. But I can't think how to be anything else," and dreaming up romantic, idyllic European tours where she can travel unfettered and alone (unheard of for a lady in that day) to places where people “don’t care for politics.” Don’t get me wrong, I don’t agree with those repressive and delimiting attitudes, but nevertheless, I can still resent the naïve and ridiculous mindsets they foster in these pale, privileged, delicate but useless women. (I have more respect for Molly Bloom, and as anyone who reads my work knows, Marion and I are hardly bff, because Joyce uses her as a tool to valorize an anti-intellectual purely sensual (not to mention slutty) and chauvinistic portrayal of women.) Calling Lois insufferable really doesn’t cover it. While she and her friends are obsessing over petty social slights, houseguests, the weather, and tennis parties, Gerald and his fellows at-arms are out capturing and murdering rebels and innocent civilians in the name of God and Empire without so much as a second thought. I wish I could maintain the guise of critical objectivity, but I find Lois and Bowen, as her creator, utterly abhorrent. I want to smack their smug, Ascendancy faces.So, Gerald ends up murdered in an ambush after dumping Lois, who heads to Tours. In February, after her departure, Danielstown and the two other local Big Houses are burned to the ground. I can’t call it an entirely satisfying conclusion because Lois doesn’t seem genuinely devastated or irrevocably altered by Gerald’s death, or if she is, Bowen doesn’t do an effective job of portraying her as such. In fact, there is very little of Lois’ inner turmoil; she flees to the garden to see the last place she and Gerald spoke, but she is not weeping uncontrollably and inconsolably. She seems to stoically endure in a rather uncompelling way. Trust, I am the queen of subtlety and can find a way to rationalize pretty much any turn on a dime conversion. As previously stated, I have a very forgiving heart but there was no perceptible change.I think the whole project of the novel is a strange one and crystallizes in Lois’ cousin, Laurence’s dreams of an alternative past, present, and future with different outcomes. Laurence is the standard laze-about abstract Oxbridge type, reminiscent of Tibby in E.M. Forster's <i> Howards End </i>. Lois, too, from her romance with Gerald to her friendship with Marda Norton is full of fantasy. The Naylors and the Montmorencys seem likewise willfully unaware of the conditions of violence that surround them, even if they are ostensibly offended by the actions of the army—they do nothing and barely react at all beyond some brief complaining— until one of the other officers comes to Danielstown to announce Gerald’s death. The whole environment of <i> The Last September </i> with its focus on minor social dramas and privileged malaise with national conflict as merely a minor annoyance in the backdrop, a ripple that barely troubles the placidly banal surface of their lives until smack-bang at the novel's end, seems to function as Bowen’s own dream of alternative universe unmarred by struggle. Yet ignorance is not bliss, but ennui.

This is a slowly moving story; bored people who do very little do not make for an exciting read. The not likeable characters are deliberately vapid, moving though their pointless lives, worried about petty things while their country is falling apart. But the language is clever and beautiful, " Strokes of the gong, brass bubbles, came bouncing up from the hall."While this is not a style of writing that story that are popular today, it's an interesting look into the "troubled times" in Ireland. The author's preface is a good explanation of how some people tried to carry on while things were changing rapidly around them.

An account of coming-of-age on a great estate in Ireland just before independence. Totally brilliant (though often knowingly vapid) as a portrait of upper-class life, with its tennis parties, discreet servants, and do-nothing guests. The "Troubles" remain mostly in the background, though they are not forgotten. The writing is evocative and perceptive ("The ladies were in the drawing-room laughing intimately, putting across the open door a barrier of exclusion") though at times rather overwrought in a Hopkinslike manner. Unfortunately, Bowen's stylistic self-consiousness rather veils the all-too-real tragedy taking place in and around her young heroine, but it is there all the same.

This is a sad book, but full of perceptive, biting wit. Set on an Anglo-Irish estate before the Troubles swept Ireland in 1920, the story is full of obtuse, privileged people who fail to recognize their own emotions or the tenuousness of their rarified status - and are absolutely incapable of communicating anything they do figure out. This lack of political and personal self-awareness shroud the story, which focuses on a young woman's restless questioning of herself and her future; in the end, the story's muted yet violent resolution leaves you despairing of her ever coming into her own.

Very complex characters and plot but enjoyable read. Makes me want to read more of Ms Bowen. There's a cold clinical description of the characters as specimens in a crisis they are barely aware of. As it develops, they try to come to grips with it. Tough time to be a teenager.

I looked and looked and couldn’t find a plot anywhere. I found interchangeable characters, all from the same narrow segment of society, moving through a specific period in Irish history, the significance of which appears lost on them. I adore Bowen for the sheer beauty of the writing, but shouldn’t there be a plot or some character development somewhere?

This fabulous book, which I came across during my normal searches on Amazon, is truly outstanding. It has drama, pathos, love, humor, sarcasm, ignorance, imagination, persevarance and hope, and it ends, as so much in the world does, with unnecessary tragedy. I say unnecessary not because the circumstances of the story do not make it logical, but because the circumstances of the idea of life and justice and truth are so brazenly rejected by those who have the power to deliver them. Elizabeth Bowen is a truly superior talent, and worth the attention of any reader looking for that to be delivered on the written page. Awesome, and to be read over again.

Published in 1929, this novel is set firmly in Bowen's own experiences. She, herself, grew up in a 'Big House,' Anglo-Irish house. In the case of this novel, the house - almost a character in itself - is 'Danielstown' in Co. Cork, owned by Sir Richard and Lady Naylor. Also staying are Laurence, usually found with a book in his hand, and young Lois, an orphaned niece and central character of the novel.Set in 1920, a house which has been an oasis of privilege, now has Sinn Fein gunmen on the periphery of the lawn; indeed, Lois, out walking in the garden, feels a man walking by her in the trees. A gunman? The inhabitants of the house are keen to downplay the danger and have a tendency to see the English as 'others,' in a way, so that they can cling to their own sense of belonging.During the novel, there are visits. Many are neighbours, who are not only known to the Naylor's, but their ancestors are also familiar. They are part of a world that is in danger, but those who have lived for generations are loathe to admit the changes. When one visitor, Francie Montmorency ventures whether sitting on the steps in the evening may involve the risk of being shot at, she is genially decried as getting, 'very English.' Other visitors include young, English officers, who are ideal for tennis parties, but definitely seen as socially below the inhabitants of Danielstown,' and their neighbours.Bowen covers some very important topics in this novel and many events are quite tragic. However, her writing is slow, personal and almost genteel at times. We see everything through the eyes of Lois, who is a young girl, just discovering the world and her place in it. I find this a really fascinating account of a time, and people, from an author who was very much an insider of that world and the characters she portrays.

Set in 1920 but written in 1928 when the partition of Ireland had already happened, this is an elegiac book that continues to haunt. Attentive to all the complications of Irish history and the liminal position of the land-owning Anglo-Irish family at its heart, this plays out the story of a young woman's coming of age against an especially fraught background. Mesmerising prose and taut control showcase Bowen at her best.

Extremely disappointed to be charged for a sample book that is clearly marked "not for resale" because it is a free copy!!This is illegal!

Nice to get a view from an Anglo Irish perspective.

Classic writing and totally captures the times, context and landscape!