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Summary: A Novel That Leaves You Soaring
Review: This long awaited novel did not disappoint! Lee Smith is at her best in this tale of old friends reuniting and coming to terms with middle age. Her humor and picture perfect descriptions left me laughing and breathless all at the same time. What a great talent. She is the Eudora Welty for the next generation!
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Summary: GREAT BOOK!!!
Review: What a joy it was to read The Last Girls. I hated to see it end. Lee Smith seems to write straight from her big, wide-open heart, and a new book from her is always like a big present. It's a great book for book club, and it's already on the list for ours. I'm giving it to all my friends for Christmas. My sister and I happened to be reading it at the same time, and it sparked so many memories and so much conversation. Order it right away -- you won't be sorry!
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Summary: Lee Smith Does Her Thing
Review: I can't imagine what the angry reader from Chapel Hill was reading. She thought it was The Last Girls, but it obviously was something else. Her response turned into a personal tirade, ending with a jab at Smith's husband Hal Crowther, whose essays and commentary have made the state of North CArolina the richer and more interesting for years. Poor lady. She needs to join the girls on this river trip, have a few drinks, and loosen up. Smith's new novel is not Fair and Tender Ladies or Oral History, which are among the best books in contemporary American fiction, but LAST GIRLS is consistently lively, funny, and heartbreaking. The criticism that nothing is ever resolved is precisly the point. We don't RESOLVE our lives, we live them. These women are complex and quirky. I loved riding down the river with them, and I'd be happy to talk with them about anything. Fingernail polish, men, Dolly Parton, you name it. If Lee SMith is writing about it, it's going to be worth reading.
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Summary: A lighthearted pleasure!
Review: I'm not sure what book the previous two reviewers read, but it can't have been the same one I did. I too live in NC, although I'm a transplant from regions north. I've been looking forward to this book since the author gave a reading a year and a half ago at a local college. The book powerfully evokes the world of women's colleges of 30 - 40 years ago, and traces the lives of several "girls" (as they were called then) to the present day. If you rememeber what string-of-pearl manners and mores meant, and have navigated the distance from that time to this, you'll enjoy this book.
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Summary: The Last Girls Roll Again
Review: This book was a great trip from start to finish. It had everything I look for in a novel -- endearing characters, compelling stories, humor and heart. Anyone who loves women's fiction, or southern fiction, or good solid storytelling will love this book. I recommend it highly.
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Summary: The Last Girls - Disappointing
Review: After reading the reviews, I had great expectations for this book. However, I found it to be disappointing. The characters never seem to resolve anything. Although the background of each "girl" is described the characters left me cold, and at the end of the novel I thought they were more tragically "lost" than before they took the reunion trip down the river. Even Harriett noted that none of them seem to remember why they had come (Baby's ashes), and in the end we learn the truth about the request and the reason for the trip. Lee Smith has researched factual information about the river itself and described the cruise in detail. I'd like to take the cruise down the river myself, but I would not want to do it with these four women. Courtney was also shallow and ironic in her comments about fat vs. thin people and her own affair. Althought it was only implied, if she found fat people offensive on the cruise was she really ashamed of Gene? I had to wonder, what WAS she thinking in her complicated "proper" life? And would she ever "grow up" to become true to anything during her sad, but wealthy life? She seemed to assess people by how they looked and how much money they had instead of looking for any character value. Gene was more real than any of them, and when he hung up the phone I knew exactly how he felt. I think he would have walked out of the book if he had been given the opportunity. This was the first book I have read by Lee Smith, so I can not address how it compares to other books she has written.
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Summary: The Last Girls
Review: 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.
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Summary: Deliciously entertaining
Review: Lee Smith is always great, and she is no different here. Strong characters and engaging plot keep you curled up in your reading chair late into the night. She is a first rate novelist and always has something worthwhile to say. Looking forward to her next twenty books.
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Summary: A Lovely Book and a Great Read
Review: Lee Smith's The Last Girls is everything I ever want in a book, but so rarely find. I've given this book to friends and neighbors and my book club will read it next month. It is pure perfection.
The "girls' of the book are bravehearted, robust women who take one life-altering journey down the Mississippi River when they are in college--but who later take very different journeys. The book retells the story of their wild ride as they come together and fall apart, say goodbye and meet again. It is smart, funny, sassy, poignant and one helluva good read. The Last Girls is the sort of book that you want to press into your mother's hands to say, "I understand you now." It's the book you want to give your daughters so that they might live more fully and completely. It's a book you want your friends to read so that you can retell your own journey together. More than anything, it is a book that makes you want to LIVE. Utterly compelling, like the great Mississippi herself!
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Summary: Another great journey with Lee Smith
Review: There's a reason readers look forward to every book by Lee Smith. She is one of our most consistently engaging storytellers, and her characters are people we know and love. Lee is a great observer of human nature, and she describes her characters with such honest affection, it's impossible not to care about them. Her ear for regional dialect is unerring. Readers return to Lee's books over and over again not because they are flashy, but because they are not. They are comfortable and real and unforgettable.
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