Rating: 
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!
Rating:
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.
Rating: 
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.
Rating:
Summary: Lee Smith Scores Again
Review: Lee Smith is amazing. In her deceptively simple style, she offers up remarkably complex characters and stories that stay with you long after you finish reading. Her intuition and humor and generosity are evident on every page. Her fiction has always sprung from a deep place in her...whether it is an account of a mountain evangelist, or in the case of The Last Girls, the story of four college friends who recreate a trip down the Mississippi after thirty-some-odd years. This latest offering is rare because its time frame is contemporary, and it's interesting to see that her strengths are undiminished in writing about women we immediately recognize and identify with. I have always liked Lee Smith's books, and have consistently turned my friends onto her work. I am an addictive reader, and am always struck by her particular voice, which is unlike any other writer's I know of: an unpretentious, intelligent and honest telling of stories, with an easy wit and poignancy. The portraits she draws are almost anthropological in their mining of culture and incident -- I always learn something. The Last Girls is no different. Read this, and everything else you can get your hands on that she's done: Oral History, The Devil's Dream, Fair and Tender Ladies, Saving Grace...they are all varied and worth your time. [...]
Rating:
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.
Rating: 
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.
Rating:
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.
Rating:
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.
Rating:
Summary: Spellbinding!
Review: I was first introduced to Smith's novel Oral History when I was a student at Vanderbilt, and since that time I've read her entire body of work. The Last Girls is a departure from her earlier works, but I found it very engrossing--the richness of her characters really drives this wonderful story home. I'm glad to see Smith still has some surprises up her sleeve and continues to push the boundaries of Southern literature. And to that one reveiwer who appears to have a personal grudge against Lee Smith, who really cares if you're a "southern woman" whose "ancestors fought with the NC 26th at Gettysburg." What's that have do with anything? Sounds like you're the "pompous blowhard". Who peed on your petunias?
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