The Last of Her Kind

a novel, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. January 2006/Picador.
January 2007

Ann Drayton and Georgette George meet as freshman roommates at Barnard College in 1968. Ann, who comes from a wealthy New England family, is brilliant and idealistic. Georgette, who comes from a bleak town in upstate New York, is mystified by Ann’s romanticization of the underprivileged class, which Georgette herself is hoping college will enable her to escape. An intense and difficult friendship is born. Years after a fight ends their friendship, Ann is convicted of a violent crime. As Georgette struggles to understand what has happened, she is led back to their shared history and to an examination of the revolutionary era in which the two women came of age.

“[A] carefully written and discerning narrative with closely drawn portraits of two prototypical yet unique women trying to construct a friendship across an unbridgeable class divide…. [T]he historical events, both real and invented … give Nunez’s story tragic dimensions…. Nunez’s keen powers of observation make her a natural chronicler.” — Editor’s Choice, New York Times Book Review

“[A] near-perfect depiction of what it was like to be young, smart and female in a pivotal time in U.S. history.”
— Sara Nelson, Best Books of 2006, The Globe and Mail

“A complex, well-told tale.” — People

“The Last of Her Kind is full of incident and high drama … it is, above all, about the way women communicate and interpret their experience, bearing down on every nuance, irony, anguished interchange and heartbreaking loss…. [A]n unflinching examination of justice, race and political idealism that brings to mind Philip Roth’s “American Pastoral” and the tenacious intelligence of Nadine Gordimer.” — The New York Times

“Every so often you close a book and the only word that comes to mind is ‘wow.’ This … is such a work…. Rich in historical detail, this unpredictable novel zeroes in on what it means to renounce class privilege and sacrifice oneself in the service of human betterment. Stunningly powerful.” — Library Journal

“[S]uch questions as what it means to be American, whether hate and rage are useful tools and whether we can correct mistakes of previous generations engage us throughout.” — Los Angeles Times

“In previous works, Nunez has proved herself a master of psychological acuity. Here her ambitions are grander, and the result is a remarkable and disconcerting vision of a troubled time in American history, and of its repercussions for national and individual identity.” — The New Yorker

“Nunez is refreshingly critical of her characters, never overly harsh, exposing both the dark side and romanticism of the era.” — 4 Stars, New York Post

“[R]emarkable … we know immediately we are in the hands of a major talent able to open up a complex history for us…. [Nunez’s] gift is wild and large.” — Editor’s Choice, San Francisco Chronicle

“Nunez’s novel performs so well, with such unobtrusive mastery, that when the true scope of its accomplishment begins to make itself known it is quietly astonishing.” — Baltimore City Paper

“In this riveting novel, Nunez captures the very heart of the tuned-in and turned-on generation, baring both the idealism and polarization that accompanied its political turmoil…. [A] mesmerizing story of breathtaking sweep and intricate detail, without sentimentality, full of the patterns, leitmotifs and turning points of a generation.”
— Ms. Magazine

“When Georgette George and Ann Drayton meet in 1968 as freshmen roommates at Barnard College, Georgette marvels that her privileged, brilliant roommate envies Georgette’s rough, impoverished childhood. Through the vehicle of this fascinating friendship, Nunez’s sophisticated new novel (after For Rouenna) explores the dark side of the countercultural idealism that swept the country in the 1960s. Hyperbolic even for the times, Ann’s passionate commitment to her beliefs—unwavering despite the resentment from those she tries to help—haunts Georgette, the novel’s narrator, long after the women’s lives diverge. In 1976, Ann lands in prison for shooting and killing a policeman in a misguided attempt to rescue her activist black boyfriend from a confrontation. The novel’s generous structure also gracefully encompasses the story of Georgette’s more conventional adult life in New York (she becomes a magazine editor, marries, and bears two children), plus that of Georgette’s runaway junkie sister. Nunez reveals Ann’s life in prison via a moving essay by one of her fellow inmates. By the end of this novel—propelled by rich, almost scholarly prose—all the parts come together to capture the violent idealism of the times while illuminating a moving truth about human nature.” — Publishers Weekly, starred review (10/10/05)

“A friendship between two women, forged during the tumult of 1968, is tested, torn, and reaffirmed over the course of their very different lives…. A masterful construction of the troubled conscience of the era and its aftermath.” — Kirkus Reviews (11/01/05)

“Nunez moves far past the obvious clichés about activism to show a character who, while not always completely sympathetic, is nonetheless multifaceted and three-dimensional….[T]his engrossing, beautiful novel will enthrall readers.” — Booklist, starred review (1/2006)

“Nunez’s piercing intelligence and post-feminist consciousness may well feel that writing the Great American novel is no longer a feasible or worthwhile goal—but damned if she hasn’t gone and done it anyway…. [The book] blossoms into a powerful and acute social novel, perhaps the finest yet written about that peculiar generation of young Americans who believed their destiny was to shape history…. This book is of course fiction, but it has more truth in it, more compassion, and more revelation, than all the confessional memoirs spewed up by all the self-aggrandizing idiots of the last decade. Don’t miss it.” — Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.com