My Last Innocent Year

A Novel

By: Daisy Alpert Florin

Narrated by: Sarah Bierstock

"The youthful-sounding Sarah Bierstock is an excellent choice to narrate this coming-of-age novel... Bierstock creates a likable character in Isabel, and listeners will want her to find her path—even if takes an affair with a professor to eliminate the bad options."—AudioFile

An incisive, deeply resonant debut novel about a nonconsensual sexual encounter that propels one woman’s final semester at an elite New England college into controversy and chaos—and into an ill-advised affair with a married professor.

It’s 1998 and Isabel Rosen, the only daughter of a Lower East Side appetizing store owner, has one semester left at Wilder College, a prestigious school in New Hampshire. Desperate to shed her working-class roots and still mourning the death of her mother four years earlier, Isabel has always felt like an outsider at Wilder but now, in her final semester, she believes she has found her place—until a nonconsensual sexual encounter with one of the only other Jewish students on campus leaves her reeling.

Enter R. H. Connelly, a once-famous poet and Isabel’s writing professor, a man with secrets of his own. Connelly makes Isabel feel seen, beautiful, talented: the woman she longs to become. His belief in her ignites a belief in herself, and the two begin an affair that shakes the foundation of who Isabel thinks she is, for better and worse. As the lives of the adults around her slowly come apart, Isabel discovers that the line between youth and adulthood is less defined than she thought.

A coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, Daisy Alpert Florin's My Last Innocent Year is a timely and wise portrait of a young woman learning to trust her voice and move toward independence while recognizing the beauty and grit of where she came from.

A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt & Company.

©2023 Daisy Alpert Florin (P)2023 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

Named a “Most Anticipated Book of 2023“ by Zibby Owens

Named a “Must-Read Book of Winter“ by Town & Country

“A deeply timely and relevant campus novel.”—Town & Country

“Readers will be rapt and pierced by a young woman's uphill battle, even in all her brilliance, to believe that she can be the ultimate witness to her own life.”—Booklist

“A brilliantly crafted campus novel for the generation before #MeToo...Florin’s prose is gorgeous and enthralling, and her imagistic portrayal of New England campus life—from divey college town bars to Winter Carnival to English department parties to skinny-dipping in the river—is pitch-perfect. She also succeeds where many stories of dubious sexual consent fail: She avoids heavy-handed moralizing in favor of ambiguity, however uncomfortable...Florin’s debut is not to be missed.”—Kirkus

Needs more polish

The story was relatable to a point, but there were times when I felt I wanted to hurry the author along. As with many authors who incorporate smoking into their characters, the focus felt very heavy on that ritual while the focus on any other ritualistic details of characters seemed light. Lastly, the attempt to refer back to the Monica Lewinsky story and encourage the reader to draw parallels felt forced, popping up out of nowhere from time to time. Overall, the story was good and the time of life it refers to is an area of growth that is always interesting, but it felt like it needed more polishing.

A lush & lyrical coming of age story

I loved this novel by Daisy Florin. The utterly gorgeous language, the sharp insights, and the voice of the main character simply swept me under. Because I didn't want to stop reading, I bought it on Audible and in print and I stayed up late finishing even though I didn't want it to end. Believe the New York Times and multiple other reviewers, this book is impossible to put down.

mid read:/

The reader did really good telling the story but in the story itself… there was so much happening and nothing happening at the same time. iykyk

Beautiful

I loved this book! So many insights and beautifully written! The characters are real. It’s a complete book. By that I mean that I’ve read so many books that ended long before I thought they should have ended. I feel cheated by those books. I feel the authors were “lazy” and just ended their story rather than completing them. In My Last Innocent Year, the author could have ended the book in a couple earlier places, but it’s such a deeper richer book by going all the way through. And I really didn’t want the book to end, because I liked it so much, so it was perfect! Like a knitted scarf, everything fit together and the future was a natural subtle progression from the past.

Not plot based

TRIGGER WARNINGS:
SA, Death, Cancer, Suicide, Parental Abduction.

What I did not like about this book.
I did not AT ALL care for the whole Clinton-Lewinsky scandal being a part of this book. The random comments about the scandal could have been spent giving us more of Isabel’s upbringing and background.

Some of the dialogue I did not care for, mostly the one where her friend just would blab on and on while not listening to Isabel.

What I enjoyed:
I enjoyed that this was a coming of age story that was more of a reflection than a plot-based story. I took the message away that we are all responsible for the choices that we make, and that sometimes what feels right and what is right are not the same things.
I liked Isabel as a main character. This story is one of self-reflection, and I feel that the way the story is written that Isabel is now older and knows what her part in the affair was, and how she continued to make choices that were not the best at the time.
I like the realistic situations that this novel explores. Poverty, grief, and the complexity of consent are the main themes for this coming-of-age novel, and while I would have liked to see it play out differently for Isabel, real life stories don’t always have a happy ending, and this was a realistic story (although fiction).

Overall, this was not a miss for me, but it was also not one of my favorites, again only because I wanted a little more for Isabel. Sarah Bierstock's narration really elevated this story for me.

Loved it.

Excellent writing and a real understanding of the time period and the young women going to college in a small, prestigious school. Atmospheric and engaging.

Fair to middling

The story is fine but the characters annoyed me for the most part. The protagonist is self destructive to put it mildly and despite her working class beginnings, extremely over privileged. Sleeping with a married professor who was a lech, not sure why the protagonist thought he would think about her at the end. I was glad that neither the protagonist nor the lech had a particularly good outcome, they deserved each other and injured others. The writing was good, better than most but didn’t live up to the hype. I’ll likely follow the author to see if her next novel is better. I believe the author is talented and has potential.

Beautiful

Nostalgic for us gen x folks, interesting and beautiful. Satisfying wrap up at the end, and gave me a few waves of that feeling you get when you look back at life; like a scoop has been taken out of your chest. But the provoking of thought was worth that sadness for a bit. It left me thinking a long time after.

Awful

No heroes, no likable characters. Post modern meaningless navel gazing. Had to finish it for my book club, but wish I didn’t have to

Terrible in every way

I can tolerate literature of all kinds and force myself to finish whatever book I start, as I did with this one, but this book is the worst one I’ve ever read/audibled. It is filled with stereotypes, ill-conceived metaphors and trite details and descriptions. The reader on audible attempted to conjure what I think she thought were appropriate New York Jewish accents which were both bad and offensive. She pronounced one of the Israeli names wholly incorrectly. The writing, at best, was for young adults. I found myself rolling my eyes numerous times at how unsophisticated it was. Don’t bother. There’s way too many other fabulous books out there.