The Last of the Southern Girls: A Novel (Voices of the South) - Softcover

Morris, Willie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807119563 ISBN 13: 9780807119563

Publisher: LSU Press, 1994

Synopsis

Carol Hollywell is beautiful, smart, elegant, and charming. A debutante from De Soto Point, Arkansas, and a recent graduate of Ole Miss, she is heir to a good southern name and a small southern fortune. She knows what she wants and, more important, knows how to get it. She is, in other words, the prototypical southern belle, a Scarlett O’Hara for the 1950s, and when she moves to Washington, D.C., in 1957, she sets the town on its ear.

Willie Morris’ cleverly conceived and brilliantly executed novel (loosely based on a real-life figure) follows this headstrong woman from her arrival at the Capital and traces the ups and downs of her life in the political and social whirl of the city over the next decade and a half. Eventually, she becomes romantically involved with a prominent congressman―an idealist, a reformer, a man perhaps headed for the very pinnacle of political life. It is at first a dazzling alliance, yet the genuine satisfactions they find in their relationship cannot long withstand the pressures of the ambitions both of them harbor. The very drives that initially brought them together in the end propel their love affair into jeopardy.

Morris paints a devastatingly accurate portrait not only of a power-hungry woman but also of the society that feeds such hunger. His descriptions of Washington and its denizens―the politicos, the journalists, the socialites, and the hangers-on―are nothing short of breathtaking.

About this title

About the Author:

Willie Morris (1934--1999) was born in Yazoo CIty, Mississippi, attended the University of Texas, won a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford University, was editor of The Texas Observer, and in 1967 became the youngest editor in chief of Harper's in the history of the magazine. He is the author of many books, including My Dog Skip and Good Old Boy: A Delta Boyhood.

Review:

“Willie Morris has written a witty, intelligent, and engaging book about Washington. . . . As a roman a clef, it is great fun.” (Jonathan Yardley The New Republic)

“His heroine is certainly an interesting character; witty, beautiful, shrewd, and as rooted in her genteel Arkansas origins as a pecan tree.” (The New Yorker)

About this edition

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0807119563
• ISBN 13: 9780807119563
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304