I am from southwestern Virginia. And, in my opinion, anyone who isn't from this often-ignored portion of the United States cannot understand the essence of the place I call home. It is a gorgeous corner of the world -- blue mountains, green valleys, farms, cows, tiny towns and one area code for the whole region.
I have not been able to find anywhere else the combination of gentile Southern culture and backwoods customs that southwestern Virginia possesses. I am eternally proud to say that I am from the natural wonder that is southwestern Virginia, but unfortunately, not many widely-known authors choose to set their tales in my homeland.
Fortunately, Lee Smith, who, again in my opinion, is the greatest living author, shares my heritage and displays it beautifully on the page.
I read my first Lee Smith novel, "The Devil's Dream," when I was a freshman in high school. Immediately after that, I read "Saving Grace," "Black Mountain Breakdown," "Oral History," "Fair and Tender Ladies" and "The Last Day the Dogbushes Bloomed." At this point, it would be difficult to hide the fact that I'm a fan. I am completely addicted to her prose, and not just because a great deal of action takes place in the region that I call home. The familiarity in her words and descriptions are mere icing on the cake. Smith is an utterly breathtaking author.
When I saw that Smith had a new book, "The Last Girls," not even my extreme miserliness could keep me from buying the hardback copy. Not even tests and lab reports could keep me from eating it up. And not even extreme exhaustion could keep me from reading at every chance I got, staying up far later than necessary to finish a chapter.
This is one of those novels that presents a book lover with a maddening conflict between addiction to words and dread of the beauty being over. When I had read the last page, I sat back in my bed to relish the thoughts the book provoked in me. This enjoyment was immediately followed with a sense of disappointment that I had actually finished the book and had no more to read.
"The Last Girls" flips back and forth in time, chronicling both the years that a group of girlfriends spent at the fictional Mary Scott College (based on Smith's alma mater, Hollins College) and their reunion cruise down the Mississippi decades later in memory of their recently deceased classmate. The characters are beautifully drawn -- the kind of characters that are so realistically three-dimensional that I couldn't help but get to know them on a personal basis.
There is Margaret "Baby" Ballou, the victim of a deadly car crash. Although she is included in the cruise only as a wooden box of ashes, she is described in detail through the other women's flashbacks to college and their conversations surrounding her flamboyant, self-destructive behavior.
Next comes the quiet and prudent Harriet. Never married, she lives the calm life of a single community college English professor. In college, she was Baby's roommate and the only one of the girls who came even close to knowing or understanding her.
Then there is Courtney, the wealthy, adulterous wife of an equally adulterous husband, whose pride and level-headedness cannot stop her life from falling apart. In one fell swoop, she is losing her husband to an unknown neurological disease and her florist/ lover to her inability to commit.
Anna is the eccentric prima donna of the group. She has earned fame and fortune by writing cheap romance novels and hides her unhappiness and the dark circles under her eyes behind a facade of aloofness and movie star sunglasses.
Finally, there is Catherine, the only one to bring her husband, Russell, along with her. Both the nostalgia of the trip and the recent discovery of a lump in her breast cause Catherine to pull away both from her old friends and her husband.
This novel is absolutely magical -- it is tragic, heartening, lovely and depressing all at once. Smith has a rare gift in a veteran writer --- she has mastered the art of words without losing any of her fresh passion or commitment to the meaningful. Smith chronicles the tales of believable, extraordinary and yet completely normal women. The reader gets inside the heads and hearts of these five women -- a both frightening and amazing concept.
Considering the fact that I spent quite a few nights reading much later that I probably should have been, I think I can I highly recommend this book as one of those solidly addictive pleasure reads.
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