The Last September Book

"Their life, through which they went forward uncertainly, without the compulsion of tragedy, was a net of small complications."

Isn't that the perfect definition of ordinary life, lived by ordinary people who have no potential for heroism or martyrdom, but who consider their small complications important enough to care about them and to take necessary action to secure their status quo or to change it, according to need?

The tragedy of The Last September lies in the fact that the reader knows the characters live at a time and place, the Troubles in Ireland, where ordinary life is a luxury most people can't afford. Tragedy is lurking in the shadows, while the tennis parties take place in beautiful mansions and gossip about engagements and love affairs spread like a symbolic fire. The characters read the Manns - another hint at the fact that their cultural setting is doomed, on the last chapter, ready to sink in the reality of 20th century violence.

The tragedy also lies in the lighthearted humour with which small arguments are settled:

"Miss Norton will have to change."
"Hugo, how COULD you let her get so wet!"
"My dear, I am not an umbrella."

As long as that is the worst of concerns, it hardly matters that Lois, the young woman whose budding love story is the centre piece of the plot, is not equipped with much courage. There is no need for it.

But as the calm non-action proceeds, so does time, and the clock of history ticks louder and louder:

"The world did not stand still, though the household at Danielstown and the Thompsons' lunch party took no account of it."

Once the tragedy strikes, though, they all immediately know that "The Last September" will be a dividing line in their lives. And they accept the loss with the needed amount of courage, which apparently is only distributed when it is required.

There are many such times in my own life that I retrospectively remember as a clear cut with the past. Chernobyl in 1986, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, 9/11 in 2001, or Brexit and the US election in 2016. They all have that in common that they broke into my ordinary life and forced me to see the outside world despite my wish for ordinariness and calm.

Bowen catches this calm life before the storm brilliantly, adding no additional drama to the lives of the characters of the plot, thus making the tension in the reader rise by contrast. One feels like an omniscient, yet completely powerless god watching the destruction of a flawed and yet beautiful way of life.

Recommended!