The force of her friendship.

I can't recall exactly why I decided to pick up Sigrid Nunez's novel The Last of Her Kind. I vaguely recollect seeing a review or a blurb somewhere that mentioned it, or maybe it was the cover design that appealed to me, a look that oddly brings Ikea to mind. Whatever the reason, I was drawn into Nunez's tale of a relationship between two very different women drawn together by the ideals of the counterculture '60s, only to discover years later the emotional price of that unchecked idealism.

The Last of Her Kind takes shape as a memoir, penned by Georgette George, a scholarship student thrust into the liberal hotbed of Barnard College in the fall of 1968. A child of a broken, violent home, Georgette finds herself the roommate of the brilliant, radical Ann Drayton. Determined to rid herself of the 'bourgeois affectation' of her wealthy upbringing, Ann informs Georgette that she had hoped to be placed with a roommate as entirely different from herself as possible, but in spite of her disappointment in having a white roommate, the women become friends. But as Ann becomes increasingly obsessed with correcting injustices in the world, an irrepreable rift seems to end the relationship. Several years later, though, Ann is convicted of murder, and Georgette is again reminded of how intertwined her own life is with Ann's, her own relationships with her family and lovers shaped by the force of Ann's rise and fall.

Nunez makes references to The Great Gatsby throughout the text, and indeed The Last of Her Kind concerns itself with the same themes of lost idealism and the experiences of a particular generation. Georgette and Ann (or their kin) seem to take in the full '60s experience--everything from acid to Woodstock. Some parts seem a little cliche--I skimmed the overly-long love letter penned to Mick Jagger, a result of an especially bad acid trip. Despite a misstep here and there, Nunez's writing is well-crafted, carefully creating the web that keeps the two women connected in spite of their distance from each other.

As a portrait of '60s counterculture, The Last of Her Kind sometimes strains belief. It fairs better as a novel of the forces of friendship over time, and closes with a hopeful note on the power of humanity in the face of an all-consuming ideal.