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The short version is Tara Conklin’s The Last Romantics is a gorgeously-written family saga.  It’s messy and complicated and trigger warnings should abound, but maybe not quite.  Fiona, a poet, tells the story, which is all driven by a question in the first chapter “Who was Luna?” but the book isn’t about Luna at all really, it’s about the journey, which is why I call this book is a saga, spanning nearly 100 years in the life of one family.  The real story starts with our main character is almost five and follows her and her three siblings as they grow. They experience “the failures of love,” they persevere, and they grow up. They figure some things out while others remain elusive. Along the way there are unaddressed mental health issues, abandonment, assault, trauma, addiction, social experiments, tragedy, and more.  This is not an uplifting book, but it’s powerful, thought-provoking, and really stunning.  

I read the first part in one sitting and then had to put the book down for a day and read something lighter (if one can call The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan lighter).  The first part was rough, and it could be more challenging to readers who may have been in households with family members who needed help for mental health concerns or who may feel abandoned by a parent.  I felt better about reading the second part. Perhaps I had better walls up, perhaps it didn’t hit as close to home for me, and I was definitely more well rested for that portion.  

If structure is your thing, this novel is told in four parts, as the narrator reflects back upon her past from 2079, when she’s 102 years old and giving a talk about her life and works of poetry.  Structure isn’t usually my thing, and it’s not here, but I do still appreciate the logical nature and how it is beautifully tied in with the text. Fiona has a story to tell about one of her published works, a story she’s never told before and this is her first talk in 25 years, so she knew it was coming.  We read her story in 2079, and we read it in 1981, with some interjections from the “present” and it all makes perfect sense, or it did to me, without having to go back and forth to remember what year it is (I’m looking at you All the Light We Cannot See).  

A good epilogue is definitely my thing.  While this book doesn’t technically have an epilogue, the last chapter includes a really lovely wrap up for each member of Fiona’s nuclear family.  It’s not unusual for me to finish a book and still be wanting to know what happens next, but you all know that about me already. There are a couple of characters I’d love to know more about because much of their story takes place outside of these pages, and I would really like a better picture of the author’s vision for 2079.  It’s not that far in the future, but it doesn’t feel like a simple fast forward.  

In the prologue, Fiona says this is a story about the failures of love, then at the end she says that’s wrong, “it’s about real love, true love.  Imperfect, wretched, weak love. It is about the negotiations we undertake with ourselves in the name of love” and that’s it exactly. There are failures of love in this story, but there are also successes, amidst tragedy, so there is hope, even if I wouldn’t call this a hopeful book.  Fiona tells the readers in the opening pages, “I’ve always been wary of love, you see. Its promises are too dizzy, its reasons too vague, its origins murkier than mud.” Ultimately this is a book about love, both romantic and familial, with all its warts and scars. I would love to read the blog “The Last Romantics” and The Love Poem, but I don’t see myself rereading  The Last Romantics, but maybe one day I will.  That said, I am very glad to have read it once and hope you read it and value the experience as well.  

~Nikki

The Last Romantics is author Tara Conklin’s sophomore novel. I feel so strongly about her gorgeous prose that her debut, The House Girl is now on my TBR and her future releases will be highly anticipated. I constantly saw the book advertised a lot early in the year as it was the Barnes and Noble Bookclub pick for February 2019 – so that alone made it intriguing for me. (I didn’t start joining in the bookclub until their April selection of Martha Hall Kelly’s Lost Roses. For more information about Barnes and Noble’s Bookclub go here – or message me directly.)

The biggest thing that is not apparent by the title is that this book is not a romance novel. It is unequivocally a family drama/saga of contemporary fiction. The majority of the plot takes place between the mid 1980’s and early 2010’s but spans the life of the 102 year old Fiona Skinner. We follow her and her three siblings, Renee, Caroline, and Joe from their fictional hometown of Bexley, Connecticut, to New York City, Miami, Florida, and other locales specific to each sibling. It’s about how they came together after the death of their father, fell apart, and came together again – basically just navigated life together as human beings who through it all really, truly loved each other. Nota Bene [Nikki: ‘good to note’ for those of us who didn’t take Latin]: Their father’s death is not a spoiler, the first line of chapter one is: “In the spring of 1981, our father died.” So don’t be getting on my case for that.

I really felt the struggles of each of the sisters at different points of their lives, and I think this book quietly speaks to feminism, patriarchy, and different types of privilege in just the way my girlfriends and I discuss it in everyday conversation and interactions. It’s not usually some angry “let’s topple the system” – sometimes it is – but more often it’s trying to help ourselves realize what is going on and make a conscious effort to be and do better NOW so that we can change the future and the way future generations handle life. Especially life on this planet, that seemed to be a very big deal in the 2079 of this book, but it can only be inferred that whatever was done was too little, too late for the planet and modern life in general.

As in many family dramas, the story of the Skinner children is not without its happy moments, problems, scary times, and possible triggering scenarios for the reader. It expresses all the gross and the beautiful things that LIFE has to give us. I’m giving this book a solid 4.5 stars.

The following quotation requires me to give the book a 4 star review, because it reminded me exactly of how my mother calls puberty “The Aliens.”

“The year that Renee turned thirteen, she grew high, round nubs on her chest and hair that went lank and greasy just days after her bath. She exuded a musty, earthy smell and was inhabited by a new atmosphere of churning activity like a spirit possessed. We had all seen the movie Poltergeist, and I thought that this was the only explanation for my sister: an otherworldly occupation.” 

The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin

It’s totally aliens.

~Ashley

PS: I want to point out some symbolism on the cover of The Last Romantics, but I don’t want to be spoilery about the symbolism, either. I want you to look at the vines on the cover, where they begin and end, and especially where they intersect. Please discuss with me in the comments or by personal message.