The Last September
by Elizabeth Bowen
To welcome the approach of autumn, I’m recommending The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen, first published 95 years ago in 1929.
‘She thought she need not worry about her youth; it wasted itself spontaneously, like sunshine elsewhere or firelight in an empty room.’
Elizabeth Bowen was born in Dublin at the end of the nineteenth century, the only child of an Irish lawyer. She wrote short stories and novels and divided most of her adult life between London and Bowen’s Court, the ancestral mansion in County Cork, which she inherited in 1930 and where she entertained guests including Virginia Woolf, Eudora Welty and Carson McCullers. ‘She is what happened after Bloomsbury,’ writes Victoria Glendinning, her biographer; ‘she is the link that connects Virginia Woolf with Iris Murdoch and Muriel Spark.’
Bowen’s Court was demolished in 1959, but every year, on the second Saturday in September, the little church of St Colman next door holds a service to celebrate Elizabeth Bowen’s memory. This year’s service takes place this coming Sunday.
The Last September was Bowen’s second novel. It revolves around Danielstown, a grand Irish mansion where late summer sunlight spills across couples flirting on tennis lawns. But it’s 1920, Irish Republicans are raiding police stations and the Troubles are approaching. The central character is the beautiful Lois Farquar, 21 years old – as Bowen herself was in 1920.
This was the novel ‘nearest to my heart’, said Bowen. The novelist Sebastian Barry recently admired its ‘formidable intelligence’ and ‘punk sensibility’.
In 1999, John Banville wrote a film adaptation of The Last September, which was directed by Deborah Warner and starred Keeley Hawes, David Tennant, Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon and Fiona Shaw.
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Just ordered a copy!I I loved The House in Paris.
I love Elizabeth Bowen and haven't read nearly enough of her work, including this one. Thanks for writing about it!