Alison Lurie at her most tender, ironic and enjoyable - a rich feast of a novel in the exotic setting of Florida's Key West. Also her first full length novel since The Truth About Lorin Jones.
Short story writer and novelist Lurie, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for Foreign Affairs, returns to the novel here. The title, "the last resort," is both a figurative and literal embodiment of the setting, Key West, FL, and the meaning of the place to so many of its denizens: for some, a last chance to change, or claim, their lives; for others, a last stop before death. The primary focus is on Jenny, 46; her famed naturalist husband of 25 years, Wilkie, 70, who thinks he's dying‘and tries over and over, unsuccessfully (and unbeknowst to Jenny) to commit suicide; and Lee, the woman with whom Jenny falls in love. Their lives intersect, rather hysterically, with a slew of other characters, some of whom seem too slight. Nevertheless, Lurie's characteristic mordant wit and astute understanding of American middle-class mores allow her to manipulate her characters' lives, both straight and gay, to satisfying conclusions. A cut above good popular fare, this is recommended for most collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 3/1/98.]‘Francine Fialkoff, "Library Journal"
It's been much too longÄ10 years, in factÄsince Lurie's last novel, and her new one, like her most successful previous outings, Foreign Affairs and The War Between the Tates, has a delightfully punning title. For the last resort, in this case, is that end-of-the-line city Key West, and it is also the suicide being grimly contemplated in the sunshine by celebrated naturalist Wilkie Walker. Wilkie, convinced that time has passed him by and that anyway he has cancer, has begun to be brusque with his beloved and ultra-loyal wife, Jenny. Determined to drown himself from a handy beach, he finds fate intervening with infuriating regularity. Meanwhile, Jenny, feeling abandoned, is beginning to taste the pleasures of lesbian love with Lee Weiss, a veteran earth-mother islander who runs a women-only guesthouse. Then there's handsome gardener Jacko, who has AIDS, his bumbling, animal-loving cousin Barbie and her ferocious mother, Myra, and ex-Beat California poet Gerry, who also has eyes for Jenny. Lurie puts her well-chosen cast through their paces with expert aplomb and with often hilarious and occasionally touching results. She is as witty as ever, if not quite as malevolent as of yore, and the novel is a perfect summer read: entertainment that is at once highly intelligent and mildly edifying. 35,000 first printing; author tour. (July)
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