The Last Girls (Shannon Ravenel Books) [Hardcover]

Lee Smith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 3, 2002 | Series: Shannon Ravenel Books

On a beautiful June day in 1965, a dozen girls-classmates at a picturesque Blue Ridge women's college-launched their homemade raft (inspired by Huck Finn's) on a trip down the Mississippi. It's Girls A-Go-Go Down the Mississippi read the headline in the Paducah, Kentucky, paper.

Thirty-five years later, four of those "girls" reunite to cruise the river again. This time it's on the luxury steamboat, The Belle of Natchez, and there's no publicity. This time, when they reach New Orleans, they'll give the river the ashes of a fifth rafter-beautiful Margaret ("Baby") Ballou.

Revered for her powerful female characters, here Lee Smith tells a brilliantly authoritative story of how college pals who grew up in an era when they were still called "girls" have negotiated life as "women." Harriet Holding is a hesitant teacher who has never married (she can't explain why, even to herself). Courtney Gray struggles to step away from her Southern Living-style life. Catherine Wilson, a sculptor, is suffocating in her happy third marriage. Anna Todd is a world-famous romance novelist escaping her own tragedies through her fiction. And finally there is Baby, the girl they come to bury-along with their memories of her rebellions and betrayals.

THE LAST GIRLS is wonderful reading. It's also wonderfully revealing of women's lives-of the idea of romance, of the relevance of past to present, of memory and desire.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In the brisk and readable The Last Girls, acclaimed Southern writer Lee Smith reunites four college suitemates on a boat tour of the mighty Mississippi. Thirty-five years before, inspired by reading Twain's Huckleberry Finn in class (a detail not nearly revisited enough), the women floated down the same river on a manmade raft; now they are gathered at the request of their recently deceased ringleader's husband. The story unfolds through the eyes of each woman as the old friends weave college memories with their own dramas spanning the three decades since graduation. Harriet, Courtney, Catherine, and Anna come through muddily compared to their dead friend Baby. Even in death, Baby, a Sylvia Plath-like creature with voracious appetites for poetry, self-mutilation, and sex, nearly overwhelms her more reticent friends with past behaviors better suited to a mental institution than a dorm room. As the tour boat bobs along in the wake of these women's emotional crises, Smith offers up the contemporary female life experience, fivefold. At its heart, this is a book about how we never quite outgrow the past, even after plenty of chances to do otherwise. --Emily Russin

From Publishers Weekly

The Big Chill meets Huckleberry Finn in a moving novel inspired by a real-life episode. Thirty-six years ago, Smith (Oral History) and 15 other college "girls" sailed a raft down the Mississippi River from Kentucky to New Orleans in giddy homage to Huck. Here she reimagines that prefeminist odyssey, and then updates it, as four of the raft's alumnae take a steamboat cruise in 1999 to recreate their river voyage and scatter the ashes of one of their own. What results is an unsentimental journey back to not-quite-halcyon college days of the mid-1960s ("periods cramps boys dates birth babies the works") masterfully intercut with more recent stories of marriages, infidelities, health crises and career moves, all set firmly in the South. At first the characters threaten to be mere stereotypes: innocent, self-sacrificing Harriet; arty, maternal Catherine; brittle Southern belle Courtney; brassy romance novelist Anna. But Smith reveals surprising truths about each character, even as she suggests that the fate of their departed classmate-the wild, promiscuous, possibly suicidal Baby-may never be understood. The steamboat setting provides ample opportunities to skewer cruise ship tackiness and Southern kitsch, a witty counterpoint to the often troubled personal stories of the passengers. Readers who like their plots linear may be challenged by the tangle of tales, but those who agree that "there are no grown-ups," and that there's "no beginning and no end" to the "real story" of people's lives, will find this tender, generous, graceful novel a delight.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: A Shannon Ravenel Book; 1st edition (September 3, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565123638
• ISBN-13: 978-1565123632
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (70 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,146,972 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars "The Girls" meet "The Group", March 18, 2008

By 

Red Rock Bookworm (St. George Utah) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Last Girls (Ballantine Reader's Circle) (Paperback)

Can events experienced early in women's lives really have an effect, either constructive or noxious, on the rest of their lives? This is the primary question address by author Lee Smith in her novel The Last Girls.

In 1966, five Southern college "girls" take a rafting trip down the Mississippi River. Now, 30 years later, they have come together once again to re-enact that fateful trip. The primary difference is that on this trip their mode of transportation is a luxurious steamboat and their primary reason for coming together is to journey to New Orleans and scatter the ashes of one of their fellow rafters, "Baby". As the steamboat trip progresses each "girl" (Harriet, Courtney, Catherine and Anna) reminisces about their days at college, the choices they have made over the ensuing years, and the influence Baby has had on each of their lives right down to the dreams they have either pursued or abandoned.

The raft trip appears to be a metaphor for the trip of discovery that each of us experiences as we "sail" through life, complete with the detours taken in an attempt to avoid crashing on the rocks, the effects of a rough trip on our perceptions, and the enjoyment experienced during those periods of smooth sailing.

Lee Smith has managed to capture the essence of what many women experience as they grow older. At some point each one of us explores the memories that have been tempered by time, revisits all of our youthful desires as well as acknowledging the compromises we've made, have accepted the reality of life while continuing to enjoy the fantasy world of romance novels, and ultimately we have searched for an answer to the question of the relevance of our lives.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed in Lee Smith, August 1, 2003

By 

tallybroom "tallybroom" (Atlanta, GA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Last Girls (Hardcover)

I am a huge fan of Lee Smith and I loved Saving Grace and Oral History and so I was eager to read the Last Girls, especially because I read that it was based on a real experience in Smith's life (a raft trip down the Mississippi with college friends in homage to Huck Finn). I was terribly disappointed with how stock each of the characters turned out to be. They are more "types" of an early sixties coed than real women. There is the society princess, the future librarian, the girl who does not quite fit in and so remakes herslf to suit the circumstances and, of course, dwarfing them all in their colorless lives: the beautiful, the tragic, the talented and the promiscuous Baby.

The best part of the book comes at mile 364.2. This whole chapter is about Catherine's third husband Russell Hurt, an attorney who drinks more than he should, loves his wife deeply and well and has a peculiar fascination with the Weather Channel. He is funny, likeable, flawed and, at least in this one chapter, the most fully realized character in the whole book. It is worth reading just for Russell.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good book, but....., January 9, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Last Girls (Hardcover)

I always enjoy Lee Smith's novels and The Last Girls was no exception. Finished it in less than 24 hours. However I kept getting the feeling that the book was written in a hurry, or at least edited in a hurry. There was at least one mispelling that I noticed, inconsistant time references, and (as one other reviewer pointed out) several minor characters had the exact same traits or backgrounds. Though I enjoyed the story, I kept getting caught up in these details and had a hard time focusing on it. I hope that I had just purchased the early edition, with these errors being corrected in a second printing, but I did find this rather disappointing.