The Last Girls

In the summer of 1965, twelve girls from a women's college, inspired by reading Huckleberry Finn in an American literature class, decide to recreate his ride down a raft on the Mississippi.  Thirty-four years later, four of them - Harriet, Courtney, Anna, and Catherine - agree to meet on a steamboat cruise from Memphis to New Orleans, to spread the ashes of a fifth, their former roommate/suitemate, Baby (aka Margaret).  She had died recently in a car wreck, and her widower had requested that they do this.

The cruise provides the framework for their reminisces of that 1965 trip (and other college activities), as well as their own individual pasts and presents.  Each chapter is told from the viewpoint of a different girl, and there are show more even some chapters told from the viewpoint of Russell, Catherine's third husband, who came with her on the trip.

Harriet is a college teacher, never married.  Courtney's still married to the man she dropped out of college to wed, but he's cheated on her for years - so she's also had a long-standing affair going on.  Anna is divorced and a successful romance writer, and Catherine is a sculptor.  Harriet and Anna were scholarship students, while the other three came from wealthy families.

All of the women are Southerners (from Virginia, West Virginia, Alabama, and North Carolina), and the cruise of course is in the deep South, and writing about Southerners and the South is author Lee Smith's forte.  The novel was inspired by a similar raft trip she took with Hollins College classmates in 1966, although she makes clear in the acknowledgments (page 383) that the book is "truly fiction....but the idea of river journey as metaphor for the course of women's lives has intrigued me for years."

They're the "last girls," because, according to Harriet (page 71), "they'd call us women in the newspaper if it [the raft trip] happened now."

I enjoyed this book.  I could relate to the characters to some extent, despite being about 12 years younger.  I went to an all-girls high school in Houston, where many of the girls were wealthy, but I was on scholarship.  Our high school still offered home economics classes then (they haven't for some time).  There was a group of eight to ten of us who were close in high school and college, but drifted apart as we got older - especially in my case, as I was the one who didn't return to our hometown after college, eventually living over 2000 miles away for over 20 years.  Like the women in the book, I wasn't especially close to any of these girls 34 years later.

I also enjoyed the snippets of a cruise experience in the book, and could relate to those.  Although I've never been on a Mississippi riverboat cruise (but would like to go), the Caribbean and Hawaii cruises I've been on had a lot of similarities.  Particularly funny was the couple who shared a dinner table with the five women and Russell (who, by the way, was a hoot).

I did at times have trouble following the quick switches between past and present in the chapters, and I don't understand why Smith felt a need to add a chapter at the end (after the end of the cruise) that summarized the lives of the other seven girls on the 1965 raft trip.  And I also felt the book left some questions - what did Harriet and Courtney end up doing in New Orleans - and how did Baby really die? show less

I have one word for you: shocker! Like I said, I did NOT have high expectations for this book! Boy was I WRONG. This is now one of my favorite books ever! Lets start off with the characters, Ms. Lee Smith, I commend you, boy do you know how to right a strong female character! All of the characters I could distinctly connect with and feel exactly what they were feeling. I have to say my favorite characters were Baby and Anna. Smith writes her characters so strongly, I was intoxicated by the presence of Baby, just like the other characters were. If I had a girl crush, it'd be on Baby. She was one of those feisty characters who seemed like they had the perfect "whatever" attitude and didn't give a crap what anyone else said, yet she had show more feelings too. You could feel her pain and happiness, and even I, the reader, could feel her electricity. And then there's Anna, the used-to-be aspiring writer, now gone big time. She had confidence and felt beautiful and sexy, the way every girl wants to feel. But the characters weren't the only parts I loved, I also loved the whole concept of the story, and the beautiful way Smith told it. When smith delved into the characters past, you could feel their pain and happiness, I was laughing and crying along with them. ANd even though there was no love interest at first, it was AMAZING when the guy first came in! Again, you could feel the characters' grief and happiness as they went through the ups and downs of a relationship. This book is BEAUTIFUL. It's all about love, friendship, confidence, everything that matters in life! show less

3.5 stars rounded down.

I had real reservations opening this book. I had loved my introduction to Lee Smith so much and I heard from several sources that this book was not going to live up to my expectations at all. Agreed, this is no Fair and Tender Ladies, a book that will live in my heart and mind forever, but it is a good, solid read with an engrossing story and characters that seemed real and three-dimensional.

While in college, a group of girls decided to ride a raft, ala Huckleberry Finn, down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. Four of them have come back together many years later to honor the passing of the fifth and take another voyage down the river, albeit in a more comfortable style. The book is both a glimpse into who show more they were as college girls and who they have become as women. If you have ever belonged to a group of friends and then moved on from them, but have never forgotten, you cannot help liking this book just on its face. I don’t think it hurts that the time period is one I feel connected to as well.

I have heard it said that the friends of our youth are the closest friends we will ever have, and I believe this to be true. Certainly it has been so for me. The boys of my childhood are the men I rely on now. For at no later time are we ever so open, so ready to offer up all that we have and all that we are, to allow others real access into our very souls. The friendships we make in later life are friendships of a different order, it seems to me.

These girls/women are not all the same, but they are all uniquely Southern, and this is something that Lee Smith knows about and portrays well. You might wonder that two very poor girls would end up rooming with girls who are rolling in daddy’s money, but I assure you it can happen. As a freshman, I was assigned a dorm room with a girl who was straight from the ritziest part of Atlanta, her house being a few doors down from the Governor’s Mansion. I was a lower middle-class scholarship student, who worked an on-campus job. She was refined and easy with everything; I was scared and out of my depth, and I we got on famously...one of the sweetest, least snobby people I have ever known in my lifetime. I think that experience may well explain why I sank into these relationships without any reluctance at all.

I found the backstory more interesting than the current one, which seems always to be the case when I read books with varying timelines. The end was a bit anticlimactic, but it would have been very difficult to have written an end to this story that made sense and wouldn’t have been so. All in all, a good effort, and a confirmation that I should continue to read Lee Smith’s books, which is good news since I have two more slated for 2019. show less

This may sound kind of silly but my decision to read this book came after reading on the inside cover that the story was about a reunion of friends. My husband and I both have high school reunions coming up this fall, so it seemed like the ideal thing to get me in the mood, add to my anticipation, and build enthusiasm for getting together with old friends.

"The Last Girls" is a contemporary novel about four women - now in their 50’s - who reunite for a steamboat cruise down the Mississippi. It is a trip they all took together once before as college students 34 years ago. But their trip in the 1960’s was on a raft with a whole group of girls. This time they are carrying a fifth friend’s ashes to ceremonially bury her in the river. show more No longer are they still real close to one another… or seriously sentimental about their deceased friend Baby. They are going as a favor to Baby who had made her request clear to her husband in her last wishes because those college years had been the best years of her life.

The cast:
Harriet- a shy single teacher, unhappy with her life but she can’t seem to change it.
Courtney- married, pretty, sophisticated. Seems to have it all but is she happy?
Anna- world famous author. who seems to be living vicariously through her romance novel heroines.
Catherine- nothing distinctive to say about her but she is on her third husband Russell (who tags along on the cruise) and he obviously gets on her nerves.
Baby (deceased)- She was wild, passionate, unpredictable, and liked to live dangerously.

This book could have been great with the characters having all kinds of potential. The concept of the reunion was intriguing… but what a disappointment. Character development fizzled early and the plot became bland and predictable. Major elements of the story didn’t really make sense; the women took this opportunity to re-connect and honor Baby and their glorified past, yet were all aloof, pretentious, and self absorbed. They had very little communication with each other and all but Harriet seemed un-emotionally invested in the trip. Ironically, the two most interesting characters were husband number three - Russell- and the deceased friend Baby. By mid book, I found myself wondering if these women were ever really that close to begin with and if they would ever bother to see each other again. I certainly wouldn’t read a sequel! It reminded me of a mediocre “made for TV” movie.

Disappointedly, "The Last Girls" was clearly NOT the motivator for attending my own reunion that I’d hoped it would prove to be. show less

Because I am going to hear Lee Smith speak next week, I read her excellent memoir, Dimestore, and thought I'd like to read one of her novels before going to hear her. One of the essays in her memoir has to do with the trip she made as a college girl with 13 Hollins friends on a raft down the Mississippi in 1966, and how this novel came from that group, that time.So I chose The Last Girls to read and enjoyed it very much. Unlike other reviewers, I liked all the characters, and the Southern setting, the times - those of my own youth and aging - the friendships with their ups and downs. Another thing I especially enjoyed was the description of the Mississippi River Boat tour itself. I was torn between giving the book three and a half stars show more or four, because as novels go, it wasn't that outstanding, notice other reviewers gave it every category star there is! But because of all these factors personal to me, I found it to be a really good read just now, so I'm going with four stars. I'm very glad to have read the book. show less

[a:Lee Smith|72932|Lee Smith|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1219780700p2/72932.jpg] writes about a part of the country I know, North Carolina, but she focuses on life in Appalachia, a world unto itself. I have enjoyed some of her novels very much. [b:Fair and Tender Ladies|199635|Fair and Tender Ladies|Lee Smith|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1389575982l/199635._SY75_.jpg|1437835] and [b:Oral History|8908|World War Z An Oral History of the Zombie War|Max Brooks|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1528312647l/8908._SX50_.jpg|817] come to mind. This novel has characteristics of her works that I have enjoyed, but overall it failed miserably for me. I felt the show more characters lacked depth and never really connected with one another; they were truly like ships passing in the night. While each of the characters was dealing with some aspect of change in their lives, this change was hidden from the other characters. It was like four character studies, independent of one another, layered in together.

[a:Lee Smith|72932|Lee Smith|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1219780700p2/72932.jpg] can be very hit and miss. The quality of her novels and her short stories can vary considerably. I felt [b:The Last Girls|126873|The Last Girls|Lee Smith|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1333577608l/126873._SX50_.jpg|2636756] was one of her poorest efforts. show less

“Every true story ends terribly, if you follow it far enough….”
Four women head off to recreate a trip down the Mississippi they first took many years ago when they were girls in college. The four gather at the behest of the husband of Baby, one of the original group of girls, a girl who had a strong influence on the lives of all the women, and who has just died unexpectedly in a tragic accident.

The four quirky women, the Last Girls of the title, Southerners one and all, use the trip to reminisce about the past, to contemplate the accomplishments and regrets of their lives, and to offer sympathy and support for each other.

Better-than-average Baby-Boomer women’s fiction, with strong characters and strong writing. Be warned that show more the others in my bookgroup complained about the way in which the story abruptly jumps from character to character and from the past to the present. show less