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 enlarge | Author: Lee Smith
Publisher: Highbridge Audio
Category: Book
List Price: $36.95
Buy New: $24.39
You Save: $12.56 (34%)
New (5) from $24.39
Avg. Customer Rating:  66 reviews
Sales Rank: 695111
Format: Abridged, Audiobook, Unabridged
Media: Audio CD
Edition: Abridged
Number Of Items: 10
Pages: 30
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 6.1 x 5 x 1.4
ISBN: 1565117026
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781565117020
ASIN: 1565117026
Publication Date: October 14, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 2 to 5 weeks
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| Customer Reviews:
 Usually I love Lee Smith's books October 30, 2006
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
but this one just seem half done. The characters were interesting and I wanted a better description. Somehow they weren't fleshed out. It was just not like Lee Smith's previous books.
But there were beautiful scenes, wonderful dialogue in places and I almost gasped at some things that seemed so familiar from my youth in the south.
It was however a disappointment.
 A bit of a disappointment March 14, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
To me, a successful novel means that I'm intrigued by the characters, interested in the story and maybe pushed a little by new ideas or knowledge I gain by reading it.
With that criteria in mind, this novel just wasn't more than a middling success. The characters were a bit muddled, racing between past and present situations, and always on the verge of another dramatic (as in soap opera) revelation. I never really cared about them.
The story was OK, but a grand epic of the lives of women it was not. It pales in comparison to something like Joy Luck Club.
Finally, I've read many other books that gave me a much stronger feeling of "being" in the South...Prince of Tides, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil both spring to mind.
So, overall I'd rate this as a mildly entertaining book, but nothing I'd recommend to a friend.
 A Different Twist to an Old Plot February 10, 2006
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I don't know how many books I've read in the last few years about women of a certain age who reunite, in one form or another, to share their stories. It's become a wearisome cliche--but this time, it works.
Four women who attended a cloistered, sleepy Southern women's university in the 60s, but for whom "The Sixties" never existed, reunite on a trip down the Mississippi--a twist that I thought saved the book. Of course, like all novels of this genre, we learn these women's pasts as well as their current lives, and of course there are secrets and surprises galore. But somehow, due to the superior writing of Lee Smith and the graceful way in which she weaves the tales, it just works.
I very much enjoyed this novel, and came away, not with any strong feelings about the characters themselves, but with a strong desire to cruise the Mississippi! In a really interesting epilogue, Smith is "interviewed" about the book, and reveals that she herself took such a tour in her college days (as did the characters in the book) and experienced many of the things her fictional characters did. Maybe that's why the book seems so real.
This is a nice, easy, pleasant read, and I look forward to reading other books by Lee Smith.
The Last Girls September 24, 2005
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The writing in this book is beautiful. The language captured me completely. The actual story, however, I found lacking. I wanted there to be more of an ending than there was. I thought the raft trip in the story would be more essential to the plot, but really, it was just sort of a sidenote. The premise has potential, but it just wasn't exactly realized. I'd still recommend it, however... just for the beauty of the writing.
strong characters December 13, 2004
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
At age 18-22, a dozen girls, college classmates, float down the Mississippi River on a raft. Twenty or twenty-five years later four of this group take a river cruise which retraces their earlier route. During this trip we get to know these four as they are now and listen to their memories and their thoughts about one who was unable to make the reunion trip.
Lee Smith reveals one truth that has bothered me for years: We never really grow up; it's all a lie; there's not some "magic" age where all secrets are revealed. It's a relief to learn I'm not the only one who looked forward to the enlightenment of adulthood only to come to the conclusion it never happens.
Character-driven. An interesting read -I finished the book in days- but something about open-ended stories bothers me... they're so ...unresolved. The characters are strong and will stay with me forever.
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