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The Last Of Her Kind
A Novel
by Sigrid Nunez
Nunez's novel tells the connected stories of two women who meet as freshmen at Barnard College in 1968.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 384 pages
01/2006
$25.00
ISBN: 0374183813
Fiction
General Literature & Fiction
All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...
Salon Andrew O'Hehir
A writer of Nunez's piercing intelligence and post-feminist consciousness may well feel that writing the Great American Novel is no longer a feasible or worthwhile goal -- but damned if she hasn't gone and done it anyway. OK, let's call "The Last of Her Kind" a great American novel, but however you want to define it, it's a bravura performance.
Boston Globe Barbara Fisher
This is a brilliant, dazzling, daring novel. Nunez has taken the old American Dream and stood it on its head.
Booklist Kristine Huntley
Nunez moves far past the obvious cliches about activism to show a character who, while not always completely sympathetic, is nonetheless multifaceted and three-dimensional. Told in Georgette's graceful, introspective voice, this engrossing, beautiful novel will enthrall readers. [1 Jan 2006, p. 55]
Library Journal Eleanor J. Bader
Rich in historical detail, this unpredictable novel zeroes in on what it means to renounce class privilege and sacrifice oneself in the service of human betterment. [1 Mar 2006, p. 79]
Publishers Weekly
All the parts come together to capture the violent idealism of the times while illuminating a moving truth about human nature.
The New Yorker
A remarkable and disconcerting vision of a troubled time in American history, and of its repercussions for national and individual identity.
Los Angeles Times Susan Salter Reynolds
Such questions as what it means to be American, whether hate and rage are useful tools and whether we can correct mistakes of previous generations engage us throughout. [15 Jan 2006, p. R11]
Chicago Tribune Rosellen Brown
Since good fiction, to quote John Updike, furnishe "dramatized tensions, not settled conclusions," this vivid novel's quest yields only the impassioned record of two complexly lived lives, which is satisfying enough. [12 Feb 2006]
Kirkus Reviews
A masterful construction of the troubled conscience of the era and its aftermath.
Christian Science Monitor Yvonne Zipp
Both George and Ann get generous, vivid characterizations, and Nunez is as unstinting in her detailed rendering of the idealistic '60s and their dark aftermath as she is of the worsening conditions in America's prisons.
Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Nunez's voice is unflinching and intimate, her novelistic structure as invitingly informal as jottings in a journal.
San Francisco Chronicle Robert Roper
The novel's opening passages are exhilarating, and we know immediately we are in the hands of a major talent able to open up a complex history for us.
The New York Times Elizabeth Benedict
One of the best moments in the book is when the meaning of the title is revealed. Like so much else here, it startles and lingers long in the heart and the mind.
The New York Times Book Review Megan Marshall
Nunez's keen powers of observation make her a natural chronicler. It's not hard to suspect she has plenty of good stories about her own life to tell.
Village Voice Joy Press
It's the lovingly etched details that make this novel hum.
Washington Post Joyce Johnson
Perhaps what we would need in order to understand Ann is for some sections of this novel to be written from her point of view. Instead, it is George, who, in her self-consciously elaborate diction, tells Ann's story as well as relating her own, and Ann remains as much a mystery to her as she is to the reader.
New York Review Of Books Claire Messud
By the novel's unexpected final lines, quoting from The Great Gatsby-- which turn away from dramatic event to a call of personal longing--the book feels like a full, often powerful, but slightly incoherent chronicle of a time rather than of a person. It feels, indeed, like a memoir, relying upon the power of the first person to elide scenes and facts that might establish a narrator's idiosyncrasies.
 The average user rating for this book is 9.0 (out of 10) based on 2 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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