The Last Girls

Starred review from July 1, 2002
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. Agent, Liz Darhansoff. Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club and BOMC selections; 15-city author tour.

June 15, 2002
In this latest effort by Southern author Smith (Fair and Tender Ladies), the characters are the "last girls" because they came of age at a women's college in Virginia just as young women ceased to enjoy being referred to as "girls." This group of former coeds, who once traveled down the Mississippi on a raft of their own construction, reunite to make the same trip on a fancy steamboat to scatter the ashes of one departed member. Along the way, we learn the stories of the unmarried Harriet, wealthy romance writer and once-poor West Virginia girl Anna, straying society wife Courtney, and Catherine and husband Russell. Each has had troubles and romances, and as they trace their stories with plentiful flashbacks to their college days, personalities are gradually revealed. This entertaining novel should be popular with readers who enjoy tales of women's lives, but it lacks the sharp edge and grimmer reality of Smith's earlier work. Recommended for popular fiction collections. Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., VA

Copyright 2002 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 15, 2002
In 1965, inspired by reading " Huckleberry Finn "for" "a favorite college teacher, a dozen young women took a raft trip down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. Thirty-four years later, four of these former Mary Scott College coeds duplicate the trip, this time on a riverboat quite luxurious compared to the craft they used before. Their reunion is not merely a way for them to catch up on each other's lives; they also intend to spread the ashes of one in their group who recently died. There is the ever-repressed Harriet, the flamboyant romance writer Anna, the proper society lady Courtney, and the happily married Catherine, all of them accompanied, of course, by their memories of the irrepressible, irresistible, but manipulative Baby, now deceased. Achieving greater depths of characterization and heights of technique with each succeeding novel, Smith sets out here, as the women themselves set out on their trip, to explore various paths by which women journey from late adolescence to early middle age. With graceful, even brilliant shifts from past to present, Smith builds this absolutely inviting, completely compelling novel around the idea that "whatever you're like in your youth, you're only more so with age."(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2002, American Library Association.)