Product Description
The Last Girls centers around four middle-aged Southern women who, as students at an idyllic Blue Ridge women’s college thirty years before, were inspired by Huckleberry Finn to take their own raft trip down the Mississippi River. Now a tragedy brings them back together for a repeat voyage under very different circumstances–aboard a luxurious cruise steamboat. Through this framework, which can be seen as a modern-day rendition of Mary McCarthy’s The Group, Smith ex… More >>
#1 by Bookworm-Red Rock on July 2, 2010 - 5:03 pm
Can events experienced early in women’s lives really have an effect, either constructive or noxious, on the rest of their lives? This is the primary question address by author Lee Smith in her novel The Last Girls.
In 1966, five Southern college “girls” take a rafting trip down the Mississippi River. Now, 30 years later, they have come together once again to re-enact that fateful trip. The primary difference is that on this trip their mode of transportation is a luxurious steamboat and their primary reason for coming together is to journey to New Orleans and scatter the ashes of one of their fellow rafters, “Baby”. As the steamboat trip progresses each “girl” (Harriet, Courtney, Catherine and Anna) reminisces about their days at college, the choices they have made over the ensuing years, and the influence Baby has had on each of their lives right down to the dreams they have either pursued or abandoned.
The raft trip appears to be a metaphor for the trip of discovery that each of us experiences as we “sail” through life, complete with the detours taken in an attempt to avoid crashing on the rocks, the effects of a rough trip on our perceptions, and the enjoyment experienced during those periods of smooth sailing.
Lee Smith has managed to capture the essence of what many women experience as they grow older. At some point each one of us explores the memories that have been tempered by time, revisits all of our youthful desires as well as acknowledging the compromises we’ve made, have accepted the reality of life while continuing to enjoy the fantasy world of romance novels, and ultimately we have searched for an answer to the question of the relevance of our lives.
Rating: 3 / 5
#2 by tallybroom on July 2, 2010 - 5:11 pm
I am a huge fan of Lee Smith and I loved Saving Grace and Oral History and so I was eager to read the Last Girls, especially because I read that it was based on a real experience in Smith’s life (a raft trip down the Mississippi with college friends in homage to Huck Finn). I was terribly disappointed with how stock each of the characters turned out to be. They are more “types” of an early sixties coed than real women. There is the society princess, the future librarian, the girl who does not quite fit in and so remakes herslf to suit the circumstances and, of course, dwarfing them all in their colorless lives: the beautiful, the tragic, the talented and the promiscuous Baby.
The best part of the book comes at mile 364.2. This whole chapter is about Catherine’s third husband Russell Hurt, an attorney who drinks more than he should, loves his wife deeply and well and has a peculiar fascination with the Weather Channel. He is funny, likeable, flawed and, at least in this one chapter, the most fully realized character in the whole book. It is worth reading just for Russell.
Rating: 3 / 5
#3 by Anonymous on July 2, 2010 - 7:22 pm
I always enjoy Lee Smith’s novels and The Last Girls was no exception. Finished it in less than 24 hours. However I kept getting the feeling that the book was written in a hurry, or at least edited in a hurry. There was at least one mispelling that I noticed, inconsistant time references, and (as one other reviewer pointed out) several minor characters had the exact same traits or backgrounds. Though I enjoyed the story, I kept getting caught up in these details and had a hard time focusing on it. I hope that I had just purchased the early edition, with these errors being corrected in a second printing, but I did find this rather disappointing.
Rating: 3 / 5
#4 by Anonymous on July 2, 2010 - 9:11 pm
After reading Oral History I knew I was on to a great writer. Lee Smith does not short change us with this new novel. Her characters are women we all know and depending on your age, have probably grown up with. Her talent at weaving tragedy with humor is on full display with The Last Girls. This novel makes those of us in middle age re-think the choices we’ve made and the opportunities we might have missed. However, the way Smith writes it with humor and grace keeps the novel from becoming a downer. I agree that Lee Smith is not only a southern treasure but a national one too. It is to the point where I read not only her books but also books she provides comment on. Some good ones I’ve found thanks to her reviews on the covers are Moon Women, A Place Called Wiregrass, and Clay’s Quilt.
Rating: 5 / 5
#5 by Anonymous on July 2, 2010 - 10:20 pm
I grabbed this novel because it was written by Lee Smith, whose previous Southern novels (most of which I’ve read), I’ve liked and learned from. This new one is a complete departure, and I wondered at first if it had been too long since I’d read a Smith novel, or whether the book really was that badly written–and decided, soon on, that yes, to me, it was embarrassingly poorly structured and written, one of the worst novels I’ve read in quite awhile.
I agree with everyone who has mentioned not caring about the characters; I didn’t either, and in fact, disliked most of them, except Harriet, who is the most developed and ‘real.’ Baby, who the book revolves around, is such a stereotype and it was hard for me to understand why she was so charismatic in college (but also why, except for Harriet, she was so little mourned by the others). The other ‘girls’ I found it hard to empathize with, though I’m of this same time period myself; I also wondered why Catherine was even in the book (she had so little to do with Baby in college, it seemed), and didn’t see the point of her husband, Russell, present on this ‘memory’ trip either–nor did I like having to read about his background. This was to be a ‘girls’ trip, so why is there a male along?
The stories of the ‘girls’ are SO skeletal, so lacking in detail–this just isn’t the Lee Smith I’ve known, who has written such memorable novels of Appalachia and the South, where I’ve usually learned something about Southern religion, say, or Appalachian music or the like. In this novel, I had hoped the setting of the Mississippi River would be more prominent, that I’d learn more about it (nope! almost nothing). Or that there would be interesting points of tension between the four women who hadn’t seen each other since they were college roommates. But there’s little conversation between them, let alone any development of the ‘girls’ meeting as women after a long absence, and the theme of friendship never evolves–or what does is cliched and empty.
Well, I found the whole book cliched and shallow, not at all thought-provoking nor good storytelling. I read it quickly, just to finish it, and was so sad, wondering what had happened to Lee Smith (or where her editor was) & felt I’d wasted my time and money. I would say to other would-be readers, give this book a wide miss, but don’t give up on Smith–try her ‘Devil’s Dream’ or ‘Saving Grace’ instead.
Rating: 2 / 5