The Last of Her Kind: A Novel
by Sigrid Nunez
|
|
Sign in to Goodreads to see your friends' reviews of The Last of Her Kind: A Novel.
discuss this book
friend reviews (0)
To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.
lists with this book
Where's the love? Add this book to your favorite list.
other reviews (showing 1-20 of 540)
It took me a long time to read this book, but that shouldn't be misconstrued as negative criticism. I liked this book quite a lot, enough to give a copy to my mother for her birthday. (She didn't like it as much as I did, and this annoys me more than it should*.) Though I normally blow through a book, I took my time with this novel. I wanted to think about the things the main character experienced, especially the disintegration of her friendship with her unusual college roommate,Ann, and her ina...more
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
add a comment
Read in July, 2007
I didn't think this was the great novel about the '60's and its effects that it was supposed to be. Sure, it provides some window on the intense radical political aspect of the '60's countercultural revolution as well as on some of the personal/social changes coming out of that period.
However, I think among the weaknesses of the book are: a title character who is way too extreme to really be any kind of representative of the era (at one point in the book she is compared to Simone Weil); and...more
However, I think among the weaknesses of the book are: a title character who is way too extreme to really be any kind of representative of the era (at one point in the book she is compared to Simone Weil); and...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in May, 2008
recommends it for:
Anyone interested in social justice
This book really spoke deeply to me through the character of Ann. The first question it raised was: How can someone from an affluent background be a social justice activist? The book revealed all the contradictions inherent in this question. Ann was so offensive at times, especially at the beginning (e.g., wanting a room mate as different from her as possible and being disappointed that George wasn't Black). Also, she wished she had lived George's life, not realizing that if she actually had, sh...more
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
add a comment
Read in April, 2008
W passed along The Last of Her Kind with some requested Markson tomes as an example, and I'm sure I'm going to do him a great injustice with this paraphrase and blame the wine, bocce, and kiteflying for all misrememberance, of women writers nailing the bigger, non parlor issues of life (I kindly direct you to the better chunk of my favorites section for some other ideas, W.) But then we argue over whether Spirited Away or Princess Mononoke is the more totemic Miyazaki (the essence of identity, t...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in February, 2008
Yet another Aeneid companion book! My mom read this one before me, and she didn't love it. She certainly didn't recommend it. But I can completely understand her resistance. She was at Barnard during the time the narrator was supposedly there. I can't imagine ever truly enjoying a novel set at Smith c. 2000...
Barnard c. 1969, though, I can do. It's sufficiently documentary-esque to inform those of us who did NOT live through the era about what it might have been like. And while I know this isn...more
Barnard c. 1969, though, I can do. It's sufficiently documentary-esque to inform those of us who did NOT live through the era about what it might have been like. And while I know this isn...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in July, 2007
I did definitely enjoy this book--there were parts that I absolutely could not put down. I don't think I wept at anything, as other reviewers had mentioned, but I knew I was captivated.
I think that there were times, though, where loose ends needed to be tied, or plots needed to be joined together in time. I'm not entirely sure how certain elements of the plot fit in the grand scheme of the narrator's life and relationship with her friend, and I found this to be most distressing, because I ...more
I think that there were times, though, where loose ends needed to be tied, or plots needed to be joined together in time. I'm not entirely sure how certain elements of the plot fit in the grand scheme of the narrator's life and relationship with her friend, and I found this to be most distressing, because I ...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in February, 2008
I have to admit that this book is full of things I love: seven sister colleges, New York City, counterculture (and its backlash), the social movements of the 60s and how they evolved in the 70s, unhealthy female friendships.
While there was a romance that I felt was a misstep, I thought that the author made such interesting choices in the way she chose to structure and reveal her story that I was won over in the end. Utterly moved, I became way too involved with this story.
In a lot of way...more
While there was a romance that I felt was a misstep, I thought that the author made such interesting choices in the way she chose to structure and reveal her story that I was won over in the end. Utterly moved, I became way too involved with this story.
In a lot of way...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in December, 2007
Although not a light read, I liked this book. It takes place in the sixties and follows the friendship of two women. One of the main characters, Ann, comes from money and is ashamed of having so much when so many people have so little. She goes a bit overboard in trying to leave behind the "rich girl" label. So much so that she tends to alienate those around her. She ends up killing a police officer (while defending her boyfriend) and, only at the end, do we get a glimpse of what her t...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in July, 2008
The nicest thing I can say about this book is that I finished it. And mostly, that only happened because I never wanted to feel compelled to pick it up again and find out what happens at the end and/or if it redeems itself. Over the course of the last couple of years, several different people have recommended this book to me. Perhaps they figured that my own story as a scholarship girl in the Ivy League/Seven Sisters and/or my own political involvement would make me identify with the narrator....more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in January, 2007
sigrid nunez's wonderful voice always manages to celebrate the iconoclast and the pious; life's traditions and it's future; personal escape and familial orthodoxy... i've been able to find myself in her characters while still feeling able to agree or disagree with their actions and where she takes them.
'the last of her kind' rang a particularly personal bell for me as it begins with the voice of a wanna-be poet who enters barnard college (granted, in the 1960's) only to leave after 3 semes...more
'the last of her kind' rang a particularly personal bell for me as it begins with the voice of a wanna-be poet who enters barnard college (granted, in the 1960's) only to leave after 3 semes...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in June, 2007
recommends it for:
Vicki
This is the best book I have read for a while. It explores the relationship between two girls who are roommates at Barnard in the 60s. The girls are from divergent backgrounds: the protagonist is from an impoverished family in Upstate New York whereas her roommate has been raised in a well-to-do Connecticut family, but is filled with self-loathing because of her privileged background. The novel moves back forth in time and charts the feminist, communist and civil liberties movements as experienc...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in June, 2007
A good read with some compelling characters. The book chronicles the lives of two women who were freshmen roommates at Barnard in 1969. One comes from a poor family, is the first in her family to go to college, and winds up living a fairly pedestrian life. The other comes from a privileged family and spends most of her life trying to scrub the taint of privilege off of her, eventually winding up in jail for the murder of a policeman. The writing is sweet and clean, and the characters are int...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
This was simply an amazing book. Fresh, original, thought provoking, surprising, and a page turner, with complex, believable characters -- I couldn't put it down. Just a stunning novel. The Salon.com review implies that, if it isn't THE great american novel, it is at least "a truly great american novel" and summarizes the plot nicely:
What begins as an enjoyable comedy of manners about the overly intense friendship between two Barnard College freshmen in 1970 -- part Mary McCarth...more
What begins as an enjoyable comedy of manners about the overly intense friendship between two Barnard College freshmen in 1970 -- part Mary McCarth...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Has a copy to sell/swap
I got this book from a book sale at my local library, and was glad that I picked it up. As others have said, it took me very long to read this book...by far the longest I have ever taken to read a book. But I was okay with it, I never wanted to rush through it. Every time I would pick it back up, I knew exactly where I left off and I instantly was back in touch with what was going on. At first I didn't know if I would like the writing style of the author, but it was great. There was some pa...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Rather serious in tone, this coming of age in the late sixties but traversing adulthood through the seventies and eighties story is unusual in that its narrator is more of an observer to society's changes than a participant thereof. Wandering my library's aisles for something that was neither male nor chick lit, I plucked this off the shelf after the dustjacket stated one of the story's main characters, an upper middle class white woman, kills a cop. However, that tidbit of plotline doesn't occu...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in June, 2007
recommends it for:
everyone
The Last of Her Kind is about the Sixties--the real Sixties, in all that era's nuances and ambiguities, not the cartoon Sixties we're so used to hearing about. It's also an inquiry into morality. The narrator, Georgette George, is from a working-class background; her freshman roommate at Barnard in the fall of 1968 is Ann Drayton, a daughter of wealth and privilege. Ann becomes the rare activist who stays absolutely faithful to her far-left, privilege-rejecting principles long after the S...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
I loved this book! The characters are exactly my age. I identified with the character who arrives at Barnard, the first in her family to go to college. While her family was very disfunctional, and mine wasn't, I identified with her feeling totally out of place in the environment of a prestigious private university. The scope of the book takes us to the present, but most of it develops the story back in the late 60's. This was a book I picked up hoping it would deliver what the cover blurb hinted...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in May, 2007
I liked this book's portrayal of that interesting, and highly liminal, period of life during the first several years of college. The fact that the protagonist's college years were set at Barnard during the tumultuous years of 1968-1970 made this portrayal extra fascinating. However, after George's college years were past, I found myself hard pressed to care very much about what occurred during the subsequent 20-30 years later. I just couldn't connect with her, or her friend Ann's character, a...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in August, 2007
Oh, how it saddens me to write this. A book with so much promise completely flounders its potential and becomes annoyingly didactic as well as reliant on cliches two-thirds of the way through. Whereas once I didn't want it to end, towards the end, all I wanted it to do was end.
The characters are ultimately impossible to relate to, the supposedly "Big Love" relationship (as it's termed in the book) is unconvincing to a fault, and the plot strands in the latter half of the book a...more
The characters are ultimately impossible to relate to, the supposedly "Big Love" relationship (as it's termed in the book) is unconvincing to a fault, and the plot strands in the latter half of the book a...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in February, 2008
i only give this one two stars, but it reads really fast and i enjoyed the point-of-views utilized throughout (the protagonist and oft times her sister). this story takes place in the late '60s and '70s, mostly in nyc. i can't say i have any idea what it was like there during that time-period or anywhere, but the main characters seemed to have experienced just about everything...which made me hesitate at the book's believability. but in the tradition of understanding the likes of say patty hears...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
