The Last Hope of Girls

by Susie Boyt

Newly installed as resident caretaker of four half-derelict West End flats, Martha Brazil can scarcely believe her luck. After years of stuffy bedsits and suburban flatshares, the future seems electric with the promise of renovation and repair. Surely, anything might happen to a girl who embraces it with gusto...But even in her new home painful memories will of a high-handed father, a mother willing to embrace only the chronically dispossessed, and a beloved brother whose antics have estranged him from the family.

256 pages, Paperback

First published February 4, 2002

About the author

Susie Boyt (born January 1969) is a British novelist.

The daughter of Suzy Boyt and artist Lucian Freud, and great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud. Susie Boyt was educated at Channing and at Camden School for Girls and read English at St Catherine's College, Oxford, graduating in 1992. Working variously at a PR agency, and a literary agency, she completed her first novel, The Normal Man, which was published in 1995 by Weidenfeld and Nicholson. She returned to university to do a Masters in Anglo American Literary Relations at University College London studying the works of Henry James and the poet John Berryman.

To date she has published four novels. In 2008, she published My Judy Garland Life, a layering of biography, hero-worship and self-help. Her journalism includes an ongoing column in the weekend Life & Arts section of the Financial Times. She is married to Tom Astor, a film producer. They live with their two daughters in London.

Reviews

[Bridget Bonaparte · Rating 3 out of 5]

Look Susie, I’m sorry to have to give it three stars. It’s such a strange book with plenty of things sort of wrong about it, the title for one, the sort of barely fleshed out best friend, the very odd way time is handled. But I read it because Loved & Missed was one of the best books I read last year and I was curious about this author I’d never heard of before with this great big success. And I’m so happy that she wrote this book and all her others because it took her writing these to get the other right. Lots to like in this book too, very charming little world around Martha, like Janey March she’s sort fallen into an odd apartment, struggles to really say what she means to people, but carries a lot of pain in a very British way—getting on with it and perhaps buying a pastry in a madcap way on a really very bad day. Anyways she gets something absolutely right about caring about someone who can’t care about you in the right way, having difficult family and not being quite stable in the world because of it.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my review of Susie Boyt's "The Small Hours" I wrote "Once in a while I find a book that just glows with superb writing and emotional insight". Her "Love and Fame" I described as "full of wit and clever and precise writing. The words just flow from the page". For "The Normal Man" I added that it was "so well written with great humour and wit". Reading "Loved and Missed" I noted that "this earlier novel is exceptional". Then "Only Human" was very readable and well written".

"The Last Hope of Girls" is Susie Boyt's third novel and equally good as all her others. Martha seems a little lost, but through her father, a famous and successful novelist, she is offered the job as resident caretaker of some top floor apartments being refurbished on Oxford Street. Hers has six rooms, mostly empty. Her father is famed in real life for giving nothing away: "Was writing about the ins and outs of unhappiness, with so much elegant relish, was it just a little bit cruel?"

Martha has a friend in Stella, their conversations are perfect. However, as the book progresses, we begin to hear more about Martha's brother Matt, a little older, but addicted to drugs. And all that entails. The author pulls no punches: "Almost anything you did for an addict just helped the illness along". Here are six terrific pages halfway through the book that prove how helpless they are. Martha's mother tries, but is that doing more harm than good? Fortunately, Martha does have her own relationships, there is still a lot of pleasure and laughter in her life. But what I liked more than anything was that the prose just glides off the page. Just like her other books. How is that? I have only one of Susie Boyt's novels left to read and I cannot wait.

[Saskia]

DNF at ~ 42%. I am giving up.

I really wanted to like this book and find all the thoughtful, beautiful, and observant writing that the reviews on the back promised but I guess this book just isn't for me. The first chapter felt like a chore and having reached the fourth one after a lot of slow reading I cannot see it getting any better. The story jumps between deeply detailed but seemingly pointless descriptions of things, places and Martha's feelings and sudden memory fragments that a re a lot more interesting than the present. Maybe that is the whole charme of the book for others, but it only made more confused and annoyed with it, so we part ways here, sorry.

[Noelle · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF - I made it halfway through the book and gave up. It was boring as hell, nothing was happening, I didn't care for the characters or the writing. Not for me.