The Last Girls

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant! Her best book yet.
Review: THE LAST GIRLS is an amazing book. I have read all of Lee Smith's books and this is definitely her best one yet. If you haven't read Lee Smith yet, this is a good place to start. If you have read Lee Smith, do yourself a favor and buy this book now! Read the editorial reviews for great descriptions. You can ignore the first two customer reviews--they are petty and wrong.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant! Her best book yet.
Review: I have read all of Lee Smith's books and THE LAST GIRLS is by far her best. If you haven't read Lee Smith yet, this is definitely the place to start. If you've read Lee Smith before, buy this book now. You'll be glad you did!

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing....
Review: I haved loved everything Lee Smith has written for years and was so looking forward to "The Last Girls"...I feel really let down. This reads like the author may have been going through a lot of old notes and ideas for stories and just kind of threw everything together.The "girls" had so little affection for (or connection to) each other that I could not manage to care for any of them either.Anna"s and Harriet's background stories started to grab me a couple of times...but then I would be dragged back to the miserable steamship and its silly "Love Boat" nonsence. Flannery O"Conner this one isn"t...skip it.

Rating:
Summary: strong characters
Review: At age 18-22, a dozen girls, college classmates, float down the Mississippi River on a raft. Twenty or twenty-five years later four of this group take a river cruise which retraces their earlier route. During this trip we get to know these four as they are now and listen to their memories and their thoughts about one who was unable to make the reunion trip.
Lee Smith reveals one truth that has bothered me for years: We never really grow up; it's all a lie; there's not some "magic" age where all secrets are revealed. It's a relief to learn I'm not the only one who looked forward to the enlightenment of adulthood only to come to the conclusion it never happens.
Character-driven. An interesting read -I finished the book in days- but something about open-ended stories bothers me... they're so ...unresolved. The characters are strong and will stay with me forever.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful story of four reunited friends...
Review: This book is like a quilt- it weaves the fabric of four women's lives together as they reunite on a steamboat to toss the ashes of one of their best friends into the Mississippi River. The women met originally when they were just young girls at a women's college. While in school they made a raft and sailed down the Mississippi River together. The novel picks up when the women are reunited thirty years later on the same river. Each character has had a fulfilling, complicated life that unfolds in each chapter. Their lives are far from the 'innocence' of their youth. But the one thing that remains constant is their strong bond as women and friends. Maybe I'm biased to love this book because I went to a women's college in Virginia an hour away from the author's college and can vividly remember places, universities and situations that she writes about. But I think any woman would relate to this book- the struggles we all go through in the courses of our lives leading into the unknown and the people along for the ride with us. I'm eager to read more of Ms. Smith's novels and have recommended Last Girls to all of my friends, my sisters really, from Mary Baldwin College.

Rating:
Summary: It could have been so much better
Review: I was very dissappointed in this book, maybe because the premise was so intriguiging to me. I expected to read much more about the first boat trip and what transpired there - I expected the events of the trip to have more long-reaching effects on the girls' lives. I wish they would have shown how the trip affected what type of women they became.

And I certainly expected to know more about all the girls on the trip and how they related with each other. Why did the author even have 12 girls on the trip? She could have lessened the number and given us more insight into their personalities and interaction.

This book focused on the individual stories of the four main characters with very loose threads tying them together. The book jacket is misleading, making the reader think the trip down the Mississippi is going to be featured in the book, when it is only referenced in passing.

Rating:
Summary: A poignant story and enjoyable read
Review: I liked this book. I wouldn't call it a ROMANCE novel - it was NOT, but it was sort of that style... except the writing was good. Definitely, it was a book for women, being about four women who had gone to college together some 30 odd years earlier and who had taken a raft trip down the Mississippi River with a large group of girls they went to college with. They got together for a Riverboat Cruise to have a memorial for the fifth friend, Baby, who had recently died.

The story went back and forth between the stories of the women on the trip, Baby, and a few other characters. I don't usually like all of that back and forth stuff, but it was well done and the stories of the women were interesting. One thing always pops into my mind, though, and that is why does every single person in every single story have to have some problem or secret or woe or whatever lying in the background of their psyche? I just DO NOT get this. Can't ANYONE ever be happy in their marriage, not have a deadly disease, be able to love, be loved, whatever? Is no one really happy? I understand that just reading about someone being happy might not be such a great story, but when your story is about so many people, couldn't one of them just be "normal" and "happy"? Just something I think about. Anyway, the story included a lot of history about the Mississippi and surrounding areas, which I enjoyed, but it was truly a story of women and of friendships and of how people change and how they stay the same. I was disappointed not to see more of a connection between the women who, as "girls" had been so close, but it was a nice story and I enjoyed it.

I listened to the audio version of the book and it was narrated by the author. I think you get a truer narration when the author does it because they know just the way they want you to hear it. I recommend the story to those who enjoy this type of female literature.

Rating:
Summary: Good idea but falls short
Review: This was the first book of hers I have read and I was hoping for more. I like her style of writing but I think she tried to do too much she tried to make each person's life too "mysterious". I don't understand why she spent so much time on Russell, he was not on the original trip I assume he was used for 'comic relief' and I did enjoy his character - but I think he took away from the Girls that the story is suppose to be about.
No one truly seemed to know each other or truly cared to learn more about each other. Even though the idea of growing into adulthood and going down river is a great one - they were still the same self-centered girls they were in college....except Harriet. Then the girls continued to treat Harriet the same way they treated her in college - like a doormat.
Then to find out that Baby didn't even plan to have her ashes dumped in the river in the first place - her husband decided for her, but didn't even go on the trip. I think he should have been there - more so than Russell.

Then ending the story with information on the other girls who were on the original trip - who cares??

Rating:
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.

Rating:
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.