[In the following review, Oldham provides an overview of the plot and characters of The Last Resort.]

Key West, the “last resort” of the novel [The Last Resort], is the place where characters in Lurie's tale meet; some of them are year-round residents like Jacko, a gardener who has just learned that he is HIV-positive, Molly Hopkins, who did covers for the New Yorker in the good old days, and Lee Weiss, an ex-psychologist who now runs a B. & B. for women. “Having been a therapist came in useful, Lee said, when neighbors or guests got difficult. It's simple, she had explained. All you do is, you just repeat the last thing they said, and it makes them think you're sympathetic and sort of defuses the situation.” Others are there for a winter vacation or plan to spend the cold months there, like Wilkie and Jennie Walker. Wilkie, a well-known writer on the environment and endangered species, agreed to come with a secret agenda in mind. Since he believes he is suffering from an incurable disease, he plans to drown himself while ostensibly swimming for exercise. Jennie is 25 years younger than he and has been the perfect wife for a productive writer, taking care of all the details of his professional and personal life. Until recently it was a loving relationship; but since Wilkie believed he was slowly dying, he had been silent and withdrawn, and Jennie was bewildered, hoping a change in environment would be helpful.

Lurie, in her first novel in ten years, depicts a large and varied group of characters with various emotional and social problems, all becoming more or less resolved by the end of the book. Lurie is a professor of English at Cornell University. She won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for Foreign Affairs in 1985, and is a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters. She divides her time between Ithaca, Key West, and London.