The Last Girls

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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: Disappointed in Lee Smith
Review: 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.

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Summary: The Last Girls is the First & Last I will Read of Lee Smith
Review: 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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Summary: like attending a school reunion .......
Review: The Last Girls tells the story of five women who attended college together and took a raft trip, along with several other girls, down the Mississippi in 1965.
They are reunited for a cruise down the Mississippi after the death of one of the group. The cruise provides an occasion for all of them to review their lives, individually and together, to piece together their memories of what happened among them 35 years earlier and at how they arrived where they are in their personal lives.
Lee Smith is a gifted writer, creating a beautiful, clear picture of a young woman's life in the mid-60's, and while many people had many different experiences, everyones' are unique.
The characters all had an edgey, unfinished but done, feel to them. In different ways they are not complete and the feeling was that they were frozen in a period of time and emotion and the capability and capacity to move on and grow and change seems to elude them. This was not a comfortable read, but it was thought provoking. The Southern history was interesting and readable, not intrusive. The problem I had with this book is that , for me , there was not a character that I identified with or felt "close" to.....hmmmmmm on second thought, that is probably a good thing!! It is, in a way, like attending a school reunion and realizing that the"popular" crowd had already had their moments in the sun, a long time ago, and that any envy you had in school for them is replaced by realizing that it was not warranted and acknowleding all the good in your own life.

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Summary: Nicely written story
Review: The Last Girls is a nicely written story of female friendship and a journey they undertook. The characters are well developed, but I found I didn't connect with them. Once I could keep the characters stories straight, I didn't mind the flashback fashion the author used to weave the story together. I guess I just kept waiting for something to happen, which didn't. Still, not a bad book to read as long as you reign in your expectations. It is what it is; a lovely well written story about floating down the Mississippi.

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Summary: The Lost Girls, Found
Review: Lee Smith is a renowned Southern writer, winner of the 1999 Academy Award for Fiction. "The Lost Girls" is the first novel of hers that I have read. It is a story well told but sometimes too cliche. Twists and Turns abound, but no real surprises.

Five classmates from a Blue Ridge Mountain college take a homemade raft trip down the Mississippi. 35 years later these same women meet again for a steamboat ride down the Mississippi following the same trek. This time the boat trip is not for fun but to bury one of the classmates, Baby.

Margaret Ballou, nee Baby was the trouble maker/finder of the group. She was beautiful and winful. She once said she made love after every funeral she ever attended and she loved funerals. It is unclear if Baby drove off the bridge intentionally in her small town in Mississippi or if she lost control of her car. She had many instances of "breakdowns" in her her years. She had several marriages and alcohol and drugs played a big part in her life. Saying that, everyone loved Baby, everyone wanted to be her friend. But Baby picked her friends carefully and the four other women who were gliding down the Mississippi were her only real friends.

Harriet was a teacher. She has led a solitary life. First living with her mother and then alone inheriting the home they shared. She has had a few romances, but is skittish and has a big hole in her life.

Courtney, the Southern belle, living the good life. A husband who paid little attention and a lover who paid too much. She wanted both but could not choose between them.

Catherine, the sculptor on her third marriage. Her present husband did not trust her and accompanied her on this steamboat trip. Did she love him, probably not, she loved her work too much.

And finally, Anna, the romance novelist. She had many fictional lovers and other lovers in her lifetime, but she was growing older and the lovers were not there any longer.

These four women met at the Peabody Hotel, at the mouth of the Mississippi to start their trip down the Mississisppi River to New Orleans. It would be in New Orleans that the ashes of Baby would be dispersed. There would be men on this trip, stories and truths to be told and revealed. Would the lives of these four women change as a result of this adventure? You Betcha!

The novel was engrossing giving a sense of "being there". Not exciting but moving. The lives of these women were not dull and a lesson to be learned in each one. prisrob

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Summary: Great Southern Fiction
Review: Lee Smith, in her book, The Last Girls, tells the story of five women who are unexpectedly reunited after the sudden death of one of the group members. The woman all attended college together three decades earlier, and use the awkward circumstance under which they are reuinted, to bond on the common topics of aging, lost loves, and other "girl stuff," as they embark on the reinactment of a cruise down the Mississsippi, taken 35 years earlier, while together in college.

The cruise provides the setting for the ladies to renew their acquantances and catch up with one another on 35 years of their lives.

Smith's characters are complex and well defined in a simple style and engrossing story that remains with you long after the completion of the book. Smith possesses the ability to present characers the reader actually cares about.

The story is engrossing and the reader is not left disappointed at the conclusion. Well recommended, especially for you lovers of Southern Fiction.

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Summary: Very Disappointed in Lee Smith
Review: 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.

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Summary: A little disappointing but nice Southern Fiction
Review: I am a big fan of Southern Fiction and of Lee Smith's other novels but I found this one a bit lacking.

You develops a nice overall metaphor with life and the river but I don't think it was emphasized and brought out enough in the book. There were a lot of flashbacks in the book, as can be expected if you read the excerpts, but very little actual story of the trip down the river itself. I was left wanting more.

This is a well written novel and gives a nice glimpse into the past and present south. It is still worth a read but I would more highly recommend Lee Smith's, "Oral History."

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Summary: grown women recreate past journey and discover new lives
Review: In the capable hands of Lee Smith, the traditional "journey" novel receives fresh and sensitive treatment. Her "The Last Girls" explores the serious themes of identity, aging and lost love through the eyes of four middle-aged women, former college friends, suddenly reunited as the result of the sudden death of a classmate. The four sedately recreate their impetuous collegiate raft trip undertaken in 1965, when they were a group of twelve "girls," all on the cusp of adulthood. Now on a cruise paddlewheeler comfortably navigating the formerly daunting waters of the Mississippi River, the women realize that, despite some being broken by life, others straining against the restrictions and boundaries imposed on them by a conformist, male-centered society, the ties that bind have endured.

Smith permits each of the four women to reveal her particular circumstances; her braided, layered techniques permit smooth transition from past to present, woman to woman. The four are tied by their common link to the rebellious, charismatic Baby, whose storied collegiate exploits reverberate still on the Mississippi. Each woman carries the burdens of the past and ominous, unsettling pressures of the present. Their crises, from physical fears to marital discontent; from the costs of fame to the quiet anguish of solitary living; from the mundane to the existential, seem to drive the women to a needed, but unspoken companionship. Yet restraint and ambiguity silently tap and tarnish intimacy and full disclosure. The result, compelling but depressing, is a waltz of adult women yearning to recapture youthful friendships but unable to let loose fully enough to discover the answer to the elusive questions of personal fulfillment and happiness.

Easily the most sympathetic character is Harriet, Baby's closest collegiate confidante, now a lonely, muffled woman. Through Smith's subtle and sympathetic characterization, Harriet emerges as a symbolic everywoman, determined to live but uncertain as to how. Her anguish, confusion and terror, often portrayed with a bittersweet, wry tone, outshine the three other women's personalities. Harriet's life resembles the very river she is once again confronting: deep, murky and unexpectedly dangerous. To Smith's credit, Harriet has yet to make a set of crucial decisions by novel's end.

This is not to say that "The Last Girls" is Lee Smith's finest work. It lacks the depth and intensity of previous novels set in the past and featuring women struggling against more compelling forces. Nevertheless, the author's most recent novel sympathetically reveals the texture of women's friendships in the context of generational change and emotional transformation.