The Last of Her Kind

This book touches on so much – a lot of heavy subjects (class, race, child abuse, rape, mental illness, divorce, murder, prison and more), but surprisingly, it usually do so in a sort of chatty tone, like a good friend trying to amuse you more than bum you out. Overall, the book reads more like a page-turner, and really doesn’t feel especially heavy. It opens in 1968 with the story of two college roommates at an all-woman’s school in New York, and basically follows their lives through all the changes to come, over the next thirty or so years. One comes from money, but is trying to escape her background and is fairly involved with leftist causes, the other (really the main character) comes from a more modest background, and seems more interested in just fitting in. There’s lots of memorable characters throughout the book (I was maybe most interested in the narrative around the main character’s younger sister, who runs away from home as a young teenager), and lots of memorable events. It’s actually kind of amazing how much Sigrid Nunez was able to cram into this book… it’s 390 pages long, but seems to have 800 pages worth of completely captivating story.

A surprise for me, not much of a novel reader, to so enjoy this book. If you are a child of the 1960s, especially if you were a protestor and/or a hippie, you will love it. Very well written with universal family and friend issues around coming of age—will be appreciated by all. Could even stand in for a somewhat highbrow beach read, (especially now that Elin Hildebrand has stopped writing her Nantucket novels.)

A tale of young women coming of age in the tumult of the late 1960s. Nunez captures the tone of the times beautifully, as well as serving up two very different protagonists: The narrator, a working class girl from the North Country of NYS, and a privileged only child of a wealthy Connecticut family. Nunez is a talented writer. I enjoyed the book enormously. My only reservation was the last part, written from the POV of a prisoner, which was not as convincing or successful as the rest of the novel.I found the martyrdom of the wealthy girl totally believable. I, too, had a college roommate who came from wealth but devoted her life to the part of society most people run from. As for the narrator's story, that, too, was beautifully drawn.

The book tells the story of a turbulent time period in America. The book is good and deserves to be read. I lived my youth during this time period. However, it really only tells half the story. We really had few to turn to in this period. Many of us wanted something more honest and rejected both political parties. Unlike today, when we pick sides and its all in for our team.In Defense od Simone Weil:The author compares the character Ann to the late author and philosopher Simone Weil. I don’t disagree with this assertion. In Simone Weil’s “On the Abolition of All Political Parties”, Weil argues against to concept of political parties. She once said: “parties were organizations designed for the purpose of killing in all souls the sense of truth and justice”. Weil claimed we should not label ourselves as part of our thoughts “if one were to entrust the organization of public life to the devil, he could not invent a more clever device”. Ann has the fire and the spirit of Weil, but she is a role player of a team where all non-members are bad.

I think this must be one of the best novels of 2006--I simply can't believe I haven't read any of Nunez's earlier ones, I'm completely blown away by this subtle & wonderfully compelling novel. It has a sharp interest in morality and ideas that I miss in a lot of contemporary literary fiction; the characters are remarkably well drawn, and the prose exceptional. It brought to mind some of my favorite novelists--Joyce Carol Oates, Rebecca West--while being also very much distinctively like no other novel I've read. Highly recommended.