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The Last Girls

This novel is about  group of girls who meet in a college creative writing course.  We meet some of them years later when they gather on a Mississippi cruise boat to scatter the ashes of the wild girl of the bunch, Baby Ballou. What a name.  Baby’s college roommate Harriett has never been in a relationship after losing her secret college love to — of course — Baby.  Courtney is finally responding to years of her husband’s infidelity with an affair with fat, jolly, eccentric Gene who on the eve of her cruise gives her an ultimatum — pick me or your husband.  Mysterious Anna is the famous romance novelist who refuses to reveal any of the intervening years’ tragedies — the loss of her baby, the loss of her second, adored husband.  I was taken with each of these characters and loved the part of the narrative from the college years.  But I could not understand the relevance of their college raft trip.  Was Baby’s one-night stand  on that trip really that significant to Harriet’s loss?  It just didn’t read that way.  I guess it was a way to justify the cruise and create resonance.  I just didn’t feel like the end brought me any closure at all.  Smith’s style was an abrupt shift from Harbach’s Art of Fielding which preceded it .  I do like her characters, but it was more of a murky-river read after Harbach’s crystal pool.  Ok, that was lame.  I shouldn’t try.  Especially in the face of writerly talent like Smith.

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