Women’s Fic Pick: The Last Girls by Lee Smith
Posted by: Rebecca Vnuk
In Lee Smith’s The Last Girls, a group of college co-eds take a river rafting trip down the Mississippi River in 1965. Nearly thirty-five years later, four of them gather together for another trip, this time on a luxury riverboat instead of a raft. The women tell each other what’s happened in their lives since the last outing. Anna is a romance author; Courtney is a society maven; Catherine is happily married; and Harriet is a repressed schoolteacher. The scene shifts from past to present, with lots of dialogue in each woman’s individual voice.
Groups will enjoy discussing the different characters, where they have gone in their lives, and the outcomes from choices made.
A reading group guide can be found at: http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides3/last_girls1.asp.
