SOURCE: Brookner, Anita. “Death in the Sun Postponed.” Spectator 280, no. 8862 (13 June 1998): 40.

In the following review, Brookner concludes that The Last Resort will satisfy Lurie's admirers but is lacking in seriousness and edge.

Into the stagy, semi-tropical setting of Key West—frangipani, hibiscus, bougainvillea, mosquito nets—come two refugees from the icy campus of Convers College, many miles to the north in New England. They are a respectable married couple, Wilkie Walker, famous naturalist and ecologist, heroic populariser and signer of books, and his submissive wife Jenny who does most of his research and all of his secretarial work. He is 70 and, although his wife is ignorant of the fact, a troubled man. He suspects that he may have a mortal illness (illness abounds in this novel [The Last Resort], although it is dealt with rather cutely) and is wondering how to effect his suicide in such a way...