Customer Reviews

The Last Girl: A Novel

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I'll give this novel three stars for effort, but that's about it. Collishaw tries to piece together a story that spans three generations of Vilnius, hoping to make some sense of the Holocaust which took place in Lithuania. Only problem is that it took him some 170 pages to finally get around to the heart of his story, in which the narrator retells his time in Vilnius during the height of WWII.

I thought it was presumptuous, to say the least, for Collishaw, a young Brit, to take the point of view of a Lithuanian penshioner. The book drags lethargically for the first two parts as Collishaw tries desperately to get into the mind of his character and offer some background on mid 90's Vilnius. It seems that Collishaw had been reading too much Kafka and not taking enough notes of what he saw in Vilnius at the time, as Collishaw paints it as a dank, dark, depressing place, which I suppose fits the mood of his anti-hero, Steponas Daumantas. He might as well have called him St. Stephen.

Eventually Collishaw gets around to telling what he set out to tell, and that is a story of the Holocaust. Collishaw draws heavily on poetic and painterly metaphors, creating a very naive version of the Holocaust in Vilnius. It moves along well enough, with a cross-cultural love affair, a good Polish pal, and enough intrigue to keep you interested. But, like the rest of the novel, it doesn't say much about Vilnius. It is simply someone trying to empathize with the history of this city.

I guess one should credit Collishaw for making a game effort. But, that's all it is. He obviously lacks the where-with-all to deal with the material he is trying to assemble in this novel. He covers over it with reasonably compelling characters and an atmospheric setting that will be new to most readers, but in the end this is no more than a bowl of milky soup.

This straightforward, beautifully-written novel breaks your heart and puts it back together again. It is not overly ambitious but the author suceeeds in creating a story that draws you in and makes you reflect. It takes courage and skill for a writer to develop serious weaknesses in a character and still have the readers feel compassion for him or her. In most of these situations, I come to dislike the character. But not in this book. Everyone we meet is multi-dimensional and full of complex baggage. They are just trying to survive and find meaning in a cruel and unfair world. But at the end, the book is all about redemption and new opportunities in life no matter how far a person has fallen. What a satisfying experience!