title: The Last Book Party | Goodreads
author: Karen Dukess
where to buy: Powell’s City of Books | The Novel Neighbor
publishing: July 9th, 2019 by Henry Holt & Co
format: advanced copy
source: BookExpo 2019
genre: historical fiction
date read: July 2019
In the summer of 1987, 25-year-old Eve Rosen is an aspiring writer languishing in a low-level assistant job, unable to shake the shadow of growing up with her brilliant brother. With her professional ambitions floundering, Eve jumps at the chance to attend an early summer gathering at the Cape Cod home of famed New Yorker writer Henry Grey and his poet wife, Tillie. Dazzled by the guests and her burgeoning crush on the hosts’ artistic son, Eve lands a new job as Henry Grey’s research assistant and an invitation to Henry and Tillie’s exclusive and famed “Book Party”— where attendees dress as literary characters. But by the night of the party, Eve discovers uncomfortable truths about her summer entanglements and understands that the literary world she so desperately wanted to be a part of is not at all what it seems.
thoughts:
My initial comments on The Last Book Party are as follows: “The Last Book Party is a little self indulgent but is a quick read. Atmospherically it really reminded me of The Great Gatsby. I’m still mulling over how I feel about it overall, but it makes a great beach read for those fascinated with the publishing world”. Reflecting on it several months later, I can’t help but feel as though my first impressions really encapsulated the story for me.
The Last Book Party opens with an epigraph from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s White Nights that reads “But how could you live and have no story to tell?” This epigraph fits the book so perfectly in that The Last Book Party reads almost exactly as you would think it would. I mean, a book set within the publishing world about a young, female up and comer that takes place in the 1980s; I wasn’t expecting something particularly ground breaking. However, The Last Book Party stays true to its summertime flare because I found it incredibly entertaining. The characterization of Eve wasn’t particularly unique but something about these rather flimsy characters made the book actually appealing, in that it was dependent on how Dukess decided to portray them just as in how real life people decide how to portray themselves.
I also actually found the setting, both in time and space, to fit the novel quite well. It’s atmosphere was incredibly pleasing; Dukess wrote on the sparser side but that made the details she chose to share all the more important. I also couldn’t help but notice the shoutout (at least in the ARC edition) to my college–which was quite fun.
Quite honestly, The Last Book Party wasn’t the most memorable novel I’ve read but I am quite fond of the premise and of its execution; I would still recommend it, particularly as a vacation read or for a self-aware young adult trying to break into the publishing world. Also–for fans of The Great Gatsby, because even though I’ve overused “atmospheric” in this review, I found the atmospheres of the novels to be similar.
