Simply marvelous book. I absolutely could not put it down once I started it. Every time I had to break from it: to sleep, to bathe, to go out to lunch with my mother and kids….it was agony. It is a lengthy book but even with these (necessary?) interruptions I managed to complete it in about 30 hours.If anyone ever attended a women’s college in a small southern town you will feel right at home in these pages so wonderfully crafted by Lee Smith. I did. I graduated from Brenau Women’s College in Gainesville, Georgia in 1989 with a degree in English just like these characters. There is nothing, nothing like an old women’s college in the South that is steeped in tradition. I am familiar with Hollins on a slight level (where Lee Smith attended and was the basis for her inspiration.) I applied there, and was seriously considering attending there—but my parents felt it was too far away from Georgia so I ended up only two hours away instead of around a dozen. I could relate to every single one of these female characters—it was like there was a little of me in every single one of them. Another thing I have done while reading this book is I have drug Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn (my 1955 edition), which is most likely the one the characters would have read.And most interestingly, in the beginning of Twain’s haunting tale is the line on the first page: “NOTICE: Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be persecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR” ~~Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry FinnAnd so it delights me so to hear the exchange between Anna and Harriett about plot in writing. There are many other areas about the original river journey and then this new river journey. I love how all characters hearken back to their English professors and what they learned from them, although Gaines was much younger at the time than they are now. I do the same thing. Forevermore, my English professors made such a mark on my attitudes regarding art, literature and writing—although I am as old now as they were then. It does not matter: they will always be the mentors that shaped me.Please read this book. I honestly cannot wait to shelve it for a year or two and then read it all over again anew. Smith is an enchantress of writing: she deftly entwines tragic situations in the lives of all the characters—all strong southern women with secrets—with very humorous comic relief—just at the right turn, at the right moment. Essentially, that is the southern way of life—crying one moment and laughing hysterically the next. One of my favorite scenes was when the women all grab a handful of Baby’s ashes to throw over the side of the riverboat, releasing their dear college friend to the river only to have her spirited remains blow back on them in the wind.
I was extremely disappointed with this book. The characters were poorly drawn. The point of view switched from one to another within a chapter. There were characters on the original boat trip who weren't included on the reunion trip - with no reason explained, and a bizarre mini-chapter at the end giving the reader information on them when the reader had never really heard of them to begin with. There was no reason to even have them as a part of the story at all. It should have been the five women on the raft, and then the four on the reunion trip - that would have made a lot more sense. And yet, there is time devoted to people who are seated at the dinner table of the characters for no reason at all. One character's husband has a point of view that is far more substantial in space (and possibly content) than the character herself - I felt that his point of view didn't contribute much. Throughout the whole book, I kept asking 2 questions: 1) what was it about the trip that made them all agree to come back to do it again; 2) what happened to Baby that she wanted them to come together to do this? I was exceedingly disappointed to find only a few small passages of flashbacks that had anything to do with the rafting trip and that the trip was orchestrated by Baby's husband after her death. I don't say this often, but I'm annoyed that I wasted my time reading this book.
Do You like book The Last Girls (2003)?
First let me say I love Lee Smith's writing. She is masterful at peppering her characters with the Southern nuances, charms and language that is familiar to me and I love that. However, this was not the best "story" of hers I have read. She did the narration herself for the audio and the honey smooth drawl of the south she gave to these women may have helped the rating. This is a great premise as it is the tale of college roommates, who took a raft trip down the Mississippi in the mid 60's. They were instant celebraties as their adventure was followed by the newspapers. (think of todays social media celebs) As one character states....they were called "girls" though in this day and age they would all have been "women". (I was interested in a comment I read that Smith based this part of the story on a raft trip she herself took with college friends) Anyway, forward to the present day as these women again gather to travel the river...minus one member of their group. We learn of their lives thru their own turns at narrating the story. How they were as the young girls, what their aspirations were, full of excitement about the future. Then what the future actually had held for them and where their lives had ended up. This nostalgic trip allowed each of them to recall who they once had been. My problem with this is that as young girls they had bonded even though they were very different, yet as women they remained rather cool and aloof. Most of them were actually rather sad to me. I liked the girls, the women not so much. kept waiting for them to become "real". They never connected and so to me the story felt disjointed.Plus points for the beautiful language, the visuals of this river journey and the leftover thoughts of remembering myself as a young girl and reviewing my own then and now. Minus for characters who were a bit cold and fake and a story that just didn't come together.
—Connie
This book opens with a character who is indecisive. This drives me crazy in real life and I thought it was a weird way to start a book. Overall this book is depressing. These former college roommates relive their Mississippi River voyage because one of their own has died. Not much of the original trip is mentioned in the book; the focus is on their college years and what happened to the four characters after college. None of the women seem happy with their current situation and some of them have engaged in extramarital affairs. Some of the chapter endings seemed rushed and the "epilogue" where the other college girls are mentioned seemed out of tune with the rest of the story.
—Aspasia
I kept waiting to connect these ladies together, or at the very least to get to know Baby through their memories. but only Harriet talked about Baby and even she wasn't given a strong enough narrative for me to feel there was some insight into their younger lives. and all the others angsting over their first world problems just kept happening in their individual silos. my last hope was for the letter and the memorial and that too was terribly disappointing with still no connection between the last girls or any real revelation. finally, how awful it was not to know if Courtney changed her mind or if Harriet stayed the weekend in New Orleans. Baby should have at least been honored for impacting their lives with her passing. bummer all around.
—Mary Fabrizio
