The Last Estate - Hardcover
Father Leterrier, what will happen to people who stray from the path of Holy Purity?
They will rot in the fires of Hell. Their flesh will melt, and all of the impurities in their blood will be filtered onto the floor like a carpet of evil dust.
It is the summer of 1920 and Christian Aragon is about to graduate from school. The sixteen year-old covets the body of an older woman married and a teacher at his school. This not only imperils his mortal soul, but threatens other consequences as well. Surrounded by vineyards and mountains and the relentless heat of the Provencal sun, there is passion, anger, fear, and blood in this tiny village at the foot of the Dentelles. But what prize awaits those who dare defy tradition, and what is the price to be paid for following one s heart?
They will rot in the fires of Hell. Their flesh will melt, and all of the impurities in their blood will be filtered onto the floor like a carpet of evil dust.
It is the summer of 1920 and Christian Aragon is about to graduate from school. The sixteen year-old covets the body of an older woman married and a teacher at his school. This not only imperils his mortal soul, but threatens other consequences as well. Surrounded by vineyards and mountains and the relentless heat of the Provencal sun, there is passion, anger, fear, and blood in this tiny village at the foot of the Dentelles. But what prize awaits those who dare defy tradition, and what is the price to be paid for following one s heart?
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
CONOR BOWMAN lives in Ireland and practices law, though he hasn t quite gotten the hang of it yet. He is married to a wonderful woman who saved him from himself. They have four fabulous children and an apple tree. His previous books are Wasting By Degrees (a novel) and Life and Death and in Between (a collection of short stories).
Review:
Love conquers all. That evergreen sentiment lights up this short novel, the first U.S. publication for its Irish author.
A knife flashes and a boy is cut in the opening sentence. It s a minor injury in a children s scuffle, but also a portent of the violence ahead. The setting is Gigondas, a village in a wine-making region of Provence. Most of the action takes place in the summer of 1920, when the fight victim, Christian Aragon, the lead and narrator, is almost 17 and about to graduate from high school. It s only two years since the end of the Great War, in which Christian s older brother Eugene was killed. Their father, the bullying, egotistical Robert, had expected Eugene to succeed him as a wine-maker, the family business for two centuries. Now that duty falls to Christian, but he s resisting; he intends to make his own way in life. (His timid mother stands apart from the struggle.) Life at the chateau since Eugene s death has become an empty ritual. School is more inviting, for Christian has fallen in love with his beautiful 24-year-old geography teacher Vivienne Pleyden, who lives alone since her brutally abusive husband disappeared, to dodge the draft. Christian s love for her is innocent, passionate and unconditional. Vivienne reciprocates it, as he discovers on an officially sanctioned school trip to Avignon. He loses his virginity to her in the confessional box of a church. What might have been messy and mawkish is redeemed by Bowman s fresh, invigorating prose. Back in Gigondas, everything changes. There s a murder, a crime of passion, followed by a courtroom drama and its lengthy aftermath. From the rhythms of a coming-of-age story, with its incremental discoveries, we are plunged into a maelstrom.
Bowman is a robust storyteller, and he keeps us hooked... --Kirkus
In The Last Estate, Conor Bowman presents a coming of age tale that, like many other examples from the genre, hinges on forbidden love and the tension between fathers and sons. What separates this tale from others like it, however, is the setting: Provence in the wake of World War I. Though he lives in Ireland, Bowman has, according to his bio, spent countless summers in France and those summers have had a profound effect upon his imagination, for the South of France comes alive in all of its verdant glory throughout the novel.
In addition to bringing the landscapes of Provence to life, Bowman is also adept at bringing the vast and irregular geography of the human heart to life as well so it s no coincidence that one of the lovers in this tale is herself a geography teacher. The novel recounts the story of a teenage student named Christian Aragon as he falls in love with Vivienne Pleyben, the young wife of an abusive husband who has (as the novel commences) fled France to avoid conscription into the Great War. As Christian s love for his geography teacher grows, so too does his sense of independence. His father, it turns out, is interested only in molding his son into a younger version of himself and wishes solely for Christian to take over the family vineyard. Though his own plans for the future are fuzzy at best, Christian knows at the very least that the last thing he wants is to take over the family business.
What s especially interesting about The Last Estate is witnessing the maturation of the narrator. Early on, when speaking of his love for Vivienne, a young Christian explains, If someone crept up on me in the middle of the night and nailed my hands to the bedpost and told me not to see her again, I would gnaw my hands off at the elbow and run to her with my limbs trailing blood through this tiny village. Needless to say, young Christian has a flare, like most teens, for the melodramatic. Yet as Christian grows older, this flare turns to introspection, to the point where a more mature Christian can reflect on relationships of an entirely different stripe: Families are the great marketplace, where all members trade on an ongoing basis, sometimes for great loss and little gain. And as Christian comes of age, the novel takes on depth and significance. We are all, in some ways, beholden to the past, Bowman suggests throughout his novel even if the only form that relationship takes is the conscious decision to break away from all that has gone before us. --Small Press Reviews
A knife flashes and a boy is cut in the opening sentence. It s a minor injury in a children s scuffle, but also a portent of the violence ahead. The setting is Gigondas, a village in a wine-making region of Provence. Most of the action takes place in the summer of 1920, when the fight victim, Christian Aragon, the lead and narrator, is almost 17 and about to graduate from high school. It s only two years since the end of the Great War, in which Christian s older brother Eugene was killed. Their father, the bullying, egotistical Robert, had expected Eugene to succeed him as a wine-maker, the family business for two centuries. Now that duty falls to Christian, but he s resisting; he intends to make his own way in life. (His timid mother stands apart from the struggle.) Life at the chateau since Eugene s death has become an empty ritual. School is more inviting, for Christian has fallen in love with his beautiful 24-year-old geography teacher Vivienne Pleyden, who lives alone since her brutally abusive husband disappeared, to dodge the draft. Christian s love for her is innocent, passionate and unconditional. Vivienne reciprocates it, as he discovers on an officially sanctioned school trip to Avignon. He loses his virginity to her in the confessional box of a church. What might have been messy and mawkish is redeemed by Bowman s fresh, invigorating prose. Back in Gigondas, everything changes. There s a murder, a crime of passion, followed by a courtroom drama and its lengthy aftermath. From the rhythms of a coming-of-age story, with its incremental discoveries, we are plunged into a maelstrom.
Bowman is a robust storyteller, and he keeps us hooked... --Kirkus
In The Last Estate, Conor Bowman presents a coming of age tale that, like many other examples from the genre, hinges on forbidden love and the tension between fathers and sons. What separates this tale from others like it, however, is the setting: Provence in the wake of World War I. Though he lives in Ireland, Bowman has, according to his bio, spent countless summers in France and those summers have had a profound effect upon his imagination, for the South of France comes alive in all of its verdant glory throughout the novel.
In addition to bringing the landscapes of Provence to life, Bowman is also adept at bringing the vast and irregular geography of the human heart to life as well so it s no coincidence that one of the lovers in this tale is herself a geography teacher. The novel recounts the story of a teenage student named Christian Aragon as he falls in love with Vivienne Pleyben, the young wife of an abusive husband who has (as the novel commences) fled France to avoid conscription into the Great War. As Christian s love for his geography teacher grows, so too does his sense of independence. His father, it turns out, is interested only in molding his son into a younger version of himself and wishes solely for Christian to take over the family vineyard. Though his own plans for the future are fuzzy at best, Christian knows at the very least that the last thing he wants is to take over the family business.
What s especially interesting about The Last Estate is witnessing the maturation of the narrator. Early on, when speaking of his love for Vivienne, a young Christian explains, If someone crept up on me in the middle of the night and nailed my hands to the bedpost and told me not to see her again, I would gnaw my hands off at the elbow and run to her with my limbs trailing blood through this tiny village. Needless to say, young Christian has a flare, like most teens, for the melodramatic. Yet as Christian grows older, this flare turns to introspection, to the point where a more mature Christian can reflect on relationships of an entirely different stripe: Families are the great marketplace, where all members trade on an ongoing basis, sometimes for great loss and little gain. And as Christian comes of age, the novel takes on depth and significance. We are all, in some ways, beholden to the past, Bowman suggests throughout his novel even if the only form that relationship takes is the conscious decision to break away from all that has gone before us. --Small Press Reviews
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- PublisherPermanent Press
- Publication date2010
- ISBN 10 1579622038
- ISBN 13 9781579622039
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages160
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The Last Estate
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Permanent Press
(2010)
ISBN 10: 1579622038
ISBN 13: 9781579622039
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