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

The Last Resort retains all [Lurie's] compulsive readability. Its prose is crisp with astringent acumen and witty alertness

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 handles…the ecstatic liberation of lesbian love

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"

Sparely, exquisitely written...touching, funny, and exuberant

Alison Lurie's tragi-comedy of love and mortality is set in tropical Key West where anything goes, and ending up can mean starting again. This is entertainment of the very classiest kind

The world’s most enjoyable author

Perfect timing for these smart re-issues of Alison Lurie's novels, which I am re-reading with enormous delight and greed. If you're new to them, lucky you: marvellously astute comedies of social, moral and sexual manners, their witty exuberance is nothing short of inspirational.