Book description
It is Columbia University, 1968. Ann Drayton and Georgette George meet as roommates on the first night. Ann is rich and radical; Georgette, the narrator of "The Last Of Her Kind", is leery and introverted, a child of the very poverty and strife her new friend finds so noble. The…
Why read it?
3 authors picked The Last of Her Kind as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I recommend The Last of Her Kind by Sigrid Nunez because I found it an absorbing portrait of a friendship in which I wasn’t sure if the two people in it even liked each other. Georgette, called George, is from a working-class family, and Ann is her wealthy college roommate. It is the late 1960s. For me, the book had a fresh angle on the protest movements. George’s focus in college is trying to pull herself up.
To me, George and Ann’s friendship is like a house on a cliff–dangerous, depending on what door you open. This book has stayed…
From Kathleen's list on books that feature complex friendships between women.
If you’ve ever had a significantly eccentric or doctrinaire friend, you know that there are risks and rewards. I love the way this novel acknowledges the jagged edges of certain friendships, which can be deep friendships all the same.
The novel begins at Barnard College when George, who grew up poor in upstate New York, meets Ann, her righteous and intense roommate. Ann is doing her best to renounce her privileged background, and although George finds her flagrant acts of idealism strange and embarrassing at first, the two women develop a strong bond.
Told in first-person, we get George’s very…
From Genevieve's list on featuring complex female friendships.
The Last of Her Kind is an expansive and compelling portrait of the connection between two college roommates, set against the backdrop of 1960s counterculture.
Both main characters – George, who is trying to shed her working-class origins, and Ann, desperate to disavow her wealthy family – are handled with sympathy and nuance. The historical setting is expertly researched without being heavy-handed, and the plot features at least one huge twist that you won’t see coming.
Although this is a long book, I enjoyed it so much that I had to ration myself not to read it all at…
From Joanna's list on complex female friendship.
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German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
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