THE LAST GIRLS

Without question, the title and the plot — Southern college schoolmates gather 35 years after they’ve last seen each other to scatter a friend’s ashes — are deeply and cloyingly icky. And who, in this day and age, would call a woman in her 50s a girl, without a deep sense of irony? There sure ain’t no irony here (this is about proper Southern women, after all, each quietly unhappy in her own quiet, unhappy way) but Smith redeems herself by painting thoughtful portraits of women who are far more interesting than the chiffon-thin plot.