- Paperback: 272 pages
- Publisher: Vintage; New Ed edition (4 Feb 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0099275791
- ISBN-13: 978-0099275794
- Product Dimensions: 12.9 x 1.9 x 19.9 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 612,218 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Last Resort
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Jenny has devoted her life to her husband, the naturalist Wilkie Walker. She is as rare a creature as the endangered species he works to preserve. But this year, as winter comes on, Wilkie seems distant and depressed. In desperation Jenny persuades him to visit Key West, but the sun and tropical scenery do nothing to cheer him up. As he grows even stranger, Jenny becomes involved with some exotic local characters - including Gerry, an ex-beatnik poet, and Lee, the dramatically attractive manager of a women-only guest house.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
It did not surprise me to discover that Alison Lurie is an academic, as her observations on academic life are very astute. Jenny, an unassuming recent graduate with no career of her own, has made it her life's work to support older husband Wilkie, his research and their children. Wilkie, burdened with a finely-honed sense of his own genius, is coming to the end of an illustrious career and is starting to worry about his health. In the meantime, his put-upon wife, the unacknowledged co-creator of most of his later research work, finally starts to discover that there is life beyond her husband and his ego.
6 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I read this in a day & thoroughly enjoyed it. In true Lurie style she examines how different poeple deal with mortality. Witty, well written and excellent characterisation. However, the end was somewhat predictable, but nontheless, highly recommended.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
33 reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Not Lurie's Best, But Still A Fun Read
12 Feb 2000
Format:Hardcover
Alison Lurie makes novel-writing look easy. And while that is not necessarily a good thing, this book makes enjoyable reading for a lazy Saturday. Lurie has a lot of insight into character, and she can paint a good picture of academics, writers, artists, and affiliated hangers on. She's also really funny in an understated sort of way.
One thing I noticed in this novel that I haven't noticed in Lurie's previous novels is her use of clothing to reveal character--hardly surprising for the author of a really good book on the culture of clothing!
Another thing to watch for in this and other Lurie book is references to her other novels. Lurie has Stephen King's habit--or he has hers--of placing sly little references to previous novels or having characters in one novel be connected somehow to characters in another novel.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
A fun, rompish read, but what's wrong with that?
3 Oct 1999
Format:Paperback
People's expectations of Alison Lurie must be exceedingly high. This book is not going to change the world, provide people with the answers to life's Big Questions, or garner her another literary prize. It's a fun read, however, built upon a simple plot and a group of characters who are only partially developed. Light fare, true, but along the way, she manages to provide some trenchant insights into the human psyche; some of the episodes and passages are just plain hilarious. Overall, this is summer vacation reading fare, but a cut above the usual poolside novel.
The only aspect of the book that annoyed me was the portrayal of the Great Environmentalist Professor's much younger wife, who comes across as something of a ditz. A major theme here is that what this unfulfilled, underappreciated woman "needs" is another woman in a lesbian relationship. This is dubious at best, and detracts from the actual incisiveness of Lurie's depiction of the classic "faculty wife." Still, those who can accept something less than Nobel Prize material will likely find this a witty and interesting novel.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Master of Small Ironies
30 Jun 1998
Format:Hardcover
Alison Lurie's new novel is set in Key West, territory she first explored in "The Truth About Lorin Jones." "The Last Resort" centers on Jenny Walker, age 46, and her septuagenarian husband, Wilkie Walker, a celebrated nature writer and environmental advocate. Wilkie is convinced he's dying of cancer, a conviction he keeps from Jenny, ostensibly to spare her pain. He agrees to a vacation in Key West because he decides it's a good place to make his suicide by drowning look like an accident. Despondent over his predicament, Wilkie withdraws from Jenny and treats her with increasing callousness while he waits for his chance with the Key West tides. Jenny, interpreting his behavior as the withdrawal of his love, finds solace with Lee Weiss, a woman she encounters on the beach, and begins a love affair with her.
In the book's major subplot, another character facing death - Perry Jackson (Jacko) - deals with his family's reactions to his HIV-positive status. In the wake of a visit by his sympathetic mother, he is descended upon first by his hapless cousin, Barbie, who is in retreat from a failing marriage to a philandering right-wing Congressman, and Barbie's homophobic mother, Myra Mumpson, who is a sort of minor league Phyllis Schafly, bristling with bad faith and bad motives toward her family members. Jenny and Jacko's worlds intersect through Lee, Jenny's lover, who runs a women-only guest house in Key West and is an old friend of Jacko's.
"The Last Resort" is not Lurie's best novel. The satire isn't as pointed as in her other books, perhaps because she isn't quite sure what she wants to satirize. Wilkie is somehow too bland a character and his offenses are not quite bad enough to merit much of our scorn. Myra is too easy a target and Lurie seems to lose interest in her. Still, the book is a pleasure to read and has many of the virtues that Lurie's readers are familiar with: the ability to convey complex attitudes and emotions in a few deft words; a sharp e! ye for self-serving gestures and mixed motives; and a fine sense of social reality, of who people are in the world and how that affects the way they behave and what they can perceive and can't perceive in themselves and others. Lurie is the master of the small ironies that connect our lives. ( In addition, for old Lurie fans, there is the pleasure of spotting the connections between characters in this book and her previous books.)
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