The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Bowen was a fan of the movies and indeed, The Last September reflects a cinematic sensibility. From its opening pages, Bowen composes scenes with the careful eye of a skilled director that uses setting and movement and visual detail to emphasize our heroine Lois Farquar’s quiet isolation from everyone around her. Bowen does not rely on dramatic exposition, but allows the atmosphere itself establish the emotional landscape.
One of the most striking details about the novel is how it portrays privilege in the face of impending collapse. There is political violence and social upheaval spreading across Ireland during the so-called Time of Troubles, the residents continue their routines by filling their days with polite conversations and afternoon visits. In fact, their insistence on pretending that everything is perfectly normal feels pretty darn contemporary. We’re all living through a political polarization and uncertainty about the future, and we’re having boring, routine, mundane conversations with each other as if nothing’s happening.
Like The Hotel, The Last September displays Elizabeth’s uncanny ability to uncover the emotional currents that flow underneath seemingly ordinary conversations. The characters don’t always say exactly what they mean, and tensions compound through implication, silence, and hesitation. And like The Hotel, the building becomes more than just the setting, turning into a symbol of cultural identity and social order and inherited privilege.
There’s also a hint during all this turmoil that maybe some societal change is for the better. This one critic named Renee C. Hoogland postulates that Lois is only so interested in men because she’s subconsciously noticed how marriage has limited the women in her life, and Lady Naylor even acknowledges that “these early marriages ruin careers” and that young girls in 1929 have more options for their future.
The Last September is considered one of Elizabeth Bowen’s finest novels and a classic that combines psychological and historical fiction. It’s also a landmark of Anglo-Irish literature, and one of the definitive fictional portrays of the Irish War of Independence. Nearly 100 years later, Bowen’s elegant prose and keep understanding of people living through periods of uncertainty makes The Last September as relevant today as it was in 1929.
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Cover Image Credit: Background image circa 1921 per Wikimedia Commons. The original photograph of Elizabeth Bowen used for the cover image is from the 1960s and the photographer is unknown. It is Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery in London, and licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0.), and found on Wikimedia Commons.
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