The Last Resort

(Paperback)

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A tragi-comedy of love and mortality set in tropical Key West, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Alison Lurie Jenny has devoted her life to her husband, the famous naturalist Wilkie Walker. 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 intriguing local characters including Gerry, an ex-beatnik poet, and Lee, the dramatically attractive manager of a women-only guest house. Wife, secretary, confidante, housekeeper - might Jenny at last break free from her role as Wilkie's support act WITH A NEW PREFACE FROM ALISON LURIE 'Full of sparkish - indeed Muriel Sparkish - observations and gently subversive wit... Lurie beautifully handles the ecstatic liberation of lesbian love' Independent

Reviews

The Last Resort, like all of Lurie's novels, concerns men and women looking for the perfect partner... If there's one thing Lurie does brilliantly, it is to describe the swift shifts that occur in emotional temperature whenever passion's involved....as funny, wicked and smart as anything she has ever written * Mail on Sunday *
The Last Resort retains all [Lurie's] compulsive readability. Its prose is crisp with astringent acumen and witty alertness * Sunday Times *
This is a charming, sunny book that seems infused with all the warmth of its setting It is full of sparkish indeed Muriel Sparkish observations and gently subversive wit... Lurie beautifully handlesthe ecstatic liberation of lesbian love * Independent *

Lurie has written The Last Resort with all the style and penetrating wit that we have come to expect from this Pulitzer prize-winning author who often draws comparison with Jane Austen. The novel is a subtle comedy of manners which explores the gap between the things that people say in their social relationships, and what they really mean... Any reader looking for a message in this congenial, intelligent novel, can conclude that while age may not bring wisdom, it should restore the precious habit, lost in childhood, of living in and for the "bright, full present"

Author Bio

Alison Lurie published ten novels, among them Foreign Affairs (which won the Pulitzer Prize), The Truth About Lorin Jones (winner of the Prix Femina etranger), and The Last Resort. She was also the author of many works of non-fiction, including The Language of Clothes, Don't Tell the Grownups, Familiar Spirits, and two collections of essays and reviews, Reading for Fun and Words and Worlds. She taught literature, folklore and creative writing at Cornell University for many years and was the Whiton Professor of American Literature emerita. She lived in upstate New York but also spent much time in Key West, Florida and in London, all of which provided settings for her fiction. She married the writer Edward Hower, and had three sons and three grandchildren. Alison Lurie died in 2020.