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Title: The Last Girls by LEE SMITH ISBN: 0-345-46495-8 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 30 September, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.42 (53 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Last Girls
Comment: I was astonished to read the dismissive and angry reviews of Lee Smith's new book, The Last Girls, on this page. The characters I spent time with were heartbreakingly real to me -- I knew those women. She captures a time and a place in our culture that is long gone -- hence the title. 1965 was not 1969, not even 1967, in terms of political consciousness. The women in this book came of age before the great social upheaval, as their stories so poignantly underscore. That makes them no less interesting, instead, their world feels like unexplored territory to me. How could anyone could read about Charlotte's memories on the riverbank with her brother, digging in the mud, and dismiss her as "cardboard"? This book is full of great small moments, movingly rendered. And it's funny, too.
Lee Smith is a treasure, and her writing is infused with heart and soul and brains -- all the stuff that makes readers return to her work again and again. Read this book. It's brilliant.
Rating: 3
Summary: Disappointed in Lee Smith
Comment: 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: 1
Summary: The Last Girls is the First & Last I will Read of Lee Smith
Comment: I am really surprised the number of 4 and 5 star reviews for this book. I am a fan of Southern fiction and was pleased when my book club selected this book for our April read. However, quickly into the novel and I was frustrated, bored and wondering how I was going to get through all 384 pages.
The premise is a good one: College girlfriends reunite to journey down the river as they did in college, only this time, it's to spread the ashes of one of their own.
Now, interestingly enough, there were 12 girls that took the initial trip back in 1965 and only four meet up for this tour. The most interesting of the four women discussed is Harriet, the shy, never married best friend to the deceased - Baby Ballou. Harriet is both interesting and endearing and everytime the author gives us a glimpse into her, she changes the direction of the story. In fact, Smith never gives you enough time with any of the characters to develop a real connection. For that matter, she spends more time on the husband of one of the women rather than the woman herself!.
I was also perplexed that the women who were reunited on the boat never really seemed to reconnect with one another or have any real interest in being there. It left me wondering what the purpose was in even telling this story.
Overall the story seems scattered and lacking of any real focus. Furthermore, I did not understand the author's need, after 370+ pages of no real mention, to "update" us on the lives of the women who didn't take the reunion ride. Who cares? If they weren't important enough to write about in the bulk of the book, why are they now? Why even have them at all?
Ms. Smith may have a large following of readers, however, I will not be one of them.
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Title: Fair and Tender Ladies by Lee Smith ISBN: 034536208X Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 13 August, 1989 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Saving Grace by LEE SMITH ISBN: 0345403339 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 23 April, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Family Linen by LEE SMITH ISBN: 0345410602 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 27 August, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Three Junes by JULIA GLASS ISBN: 0385721420 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 22 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Blessings : A Novel by ANNA QUINDLEN ISBN: 0812969812 Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks Pub. Date: 19 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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