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The paths of two women from different walks of life intersect amid counterculture of the 1960s in this haunting and provocative novel from the National Book Award-winning author of The Friend
It is Columbia University, 1968. Ann Drayton and Georgette George meet as roommates on the first night. Ann is rich and radical; Georgette is leery and introverted, a child of the very poverty and strife her new friend finds so noble. The two are drawn together by their differences; two years later, after a violent fight, they part ways. When, in 1976, Ann is convicted of killing a New York cop, Georgette comes back to their shared history in search of an explanation. She finds a riddle of a life, shaped by influences more sinister and complex than any of the writ-large sixties movements. She realises, too, how much their early encounter has determined her own path and why, after all this time, as she tells us, ‘I have never stopped thinking about her’.
‘A brilliant, dazzling, daring novel’ Boston Globe
‘A subtle and profoundly moving novel about friendship, romantic idealism and shame’ O, The Oprah Magazine
‘An unflinching examination of justice, race and political idealism that brings to mind Philip Roth’s American Pastoral and the tenacious intelligence of Nadine Gordimer’ New York Times
It is Columbia University, 1968. Ann Drayton and Georgette George meet as roommates on the first night. Ann is rich and radical; Georgette is leery and introverted, a child of the very poverty and strife her new friend finds so noble. The two are drawn together by their differences; two years later, after a violent fight, they part ways. When, in 1976, Ann is convicted of killing a New York cop, Georgette comes back to their shared history in search of an explanation. She finds a riddle of a life, shaped by influences more sinister and complex than any of the writ-large sixties movements. She realises, too, how much their early encounter has determined her own path and why, after all this time, as she tells us, ‘I have never stopped thinking about her’.
‘A brilliant, dazzling, daring novel’ Boston Globe
‘A subtle and profoundly moving novel about friendship, romantic idealism and shame’ O, The Oprah Magazine
‘An unflinching examination of justice, race and political idealism that brings to mind Philip Roth’s American Pastoral and the tenacious intelligence of Nadine Gordimer’ New York Times
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Reviews
A passionate honesty grips the heart of The Last of Her Kind ... A subtle and profoundly moving novel about friendship, romantic idealism and shame
A compelling account of the 1960s and their aftermath, a carefully written and discerning narrative with closely drawn portraits of two prototypical yet unique women trying to construct a friendship across an unbridgeable class divide
This engrossing, beautiful novel will enthrall readers
A brilliant, dazzling, daring novel
An unflinching examination of justice, race and political idealism that brings to mind Philip Roth's American Pastoral and the tenacious intelligence of Nadine Gordimer
A powerful and acute social novel, perhaps the finest yet written about that peculiar generation of young Americans who believed their destiny was to shape history.
A remarkable and disconcerting vision of a troubled time in American history
This is a novel about idealism and also about race relations, class, madness, rock music, and the true nature of love. It's a tribute to the skill and sensitivity of author Sigrid Nunez that The Last of Her Kind has something revelatory to say about each of these subjects. Decades from now, historians would do well to consult this book to get a true sense of how the upheavals of the late 1960s reverberated through the lives of young Americans from one who experienced this social earthquake firsthand
Nunez ably and effectively evokes the political and social atmosphere of the times . . . Nunez takes a jeweller's eyepiece to racial and sexual politics, to the lasting impact of male violence and to the painful fragility of family bonds . . . an enormously absorbing novel with real heart to it, and a vivid recreation of a seismic and lastingly influential time
Sigrid Nunez teaches an honors-level survey course in the sexual, political, and cultural movements that shaped the thinking (and rocked the world) of so many boomer women. Nunez's voice is unflinching and intimate, her novelistic structure as invitingly informal as jottings in a journal