About the Book
The New York Times bestselling author of The House Girl explores the lives of four siblings in this ambitious and absorbing novel in the vein of Commonwealth and The Interestings.
“The greatest works of poetry, what makes each of us a poet, are the stories we tell about ourselves. We create them out of family and blood and friends and love and hate and what we've read and watched and witnessed. Longing and regret, illness, broken bones, broken hearts, achievements, money won and lost, palm readings and visions. We tell these stories until we believe them.”
When the renowned poet Fiona Skinner is asked about the inspiration behind her iconic work, The Love Poem, she tells her audience a story about her family and a betrayal that reverberates through time.
It begins in a big yellow house with a funeral, an iron poker, and a brief variation forever known as the Pause: a free and feral summer in a middle-class Connecticut town. Caught between the predictable life they once led and an uncertain future that stretches before them, the Skinner siblings-fierce Renee, sensitive Caroline, golden boy Joe and watchful Fiona-emerge from the Pause staunchly loyal and deeply connected. Two decades later, the siblings find themselves once again confronted with a family crisis that tests the strength of these bonds and forces them to question the life choices they've made and ask what, exactly, they will do for love.
A sweeping yet intimate epic about one American family, The Last Romantics is an unforgettable exploration of the ties that bind us together, the responsibilities we embrace and the duties we resent, and how we can lose-and sometimes rescue-the ones we love. A novel that pierces the heart and lingers in the mind, it is also a beautiful meditation on the power of stories-how they navigate us through difficult times, help us understand the past, and point the way toward our future.
About the Author :
Tara Conklin was born on St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands and raised in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. She is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Last Romantics and The House Girl.
Review :
"[G]rabs you by the bonnet strings and starts running." - Entertainment Weekly
"A sorrowful, engrossing novel in which the pursuit of justice serves as a catalyst to a more personal pursuit for truth . . . Through Josephine and Lina's journeys, THE HOUSE GIRL is also a meditation on motherhood, feminism, loss, and, ultimately, redemption." - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"Exquisite...Conklin takes us down a curious rabbit hole that drops us before a looking glass of uncomfortable truths about race, power, art, family, law and ethics...One of those books in which there's not one, two or three, but about ten good parts you'll want to read and reread." - Essence
"Infused with ominous atmosphere and evocative detail...a dramatic montage of narrative and personal testimonies that depicts the grotesque routines of the slave trade, the deadly risks of the Underground Railroad and the impossible choices that slaves and abolitionists faced." - Washington Post
"A haunting story of familial love, loyalty and loss that will break your heart and then put the pieces back together again in better working condition. An impossible book to put down." - Jamie Ford
"It is the strength and fragility of the siblings' bond, the evolving nature of love that is at the core of Conklin's novel....Gracefully rendered, The Last Romantics focuses on the familiar theme of family with great originality." - Washington Post
"A modern epic...in the vein of Commonwealth, THE LAST ROMANTICS is a sweeping look at what binds families together." - Glamour
"Conklin is an accomplished storyteller.... In its elegiac final chapter, The Last Romantics leaves its characters--and its dazzled readers--surrounded by a halo of love." - Seattle Times
"Pick up The Last Romantics when you want to be swept into a fictional family....As the narrative traces [the Skinner siblings'] converging and diverging paths over the course of their lives--and promises made, kept, broken, changed--you'll fall deeper and deeper in." - Goop
"Conklin examines her characters' lives with generosity and an unflinching eye for the complexities of love and family.... Fans of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections will find similar pleasures in the intelligence and empathy on display here." - USA Today (four stars)
"An absorbing and redemptive novel of grace, craft and heroic characters." - Berkshire Eagle
"A triumph of storytelling, an ambitious examination of the failures of love and how we, against all odds, find a way to survive.... A complex, resonant work that will reshape your understanding of family."
- Kevin Wilson, author of The Family Fang
"All of the luxuriously spun characters in The Last Romantics, entwined via that impossible web we call family, unfold over their many years with the perfect balance of familiarity and wonder that makes turning their pages such a pleasure." - Laurie Frankel, New York Times bestselling author of This Is How It Always Is
"Intensely moving." - Shanina Piyarali, Shelf Awareness
"Perfectly paced, affecting fiction." - Booklist
"There's so much love and loss in this book that I read it with a box of tissues, laughing with astonishment through the tears. The kind of book you lose yourself in." - Lisa Gabriele, author of The Winters
Praise for The House Girl:
"Assured and arresting...You cannot put it down."" - Chicago Tribune
"Tara Conklin is a generous writer who deftly brings us into the world of this fictional family, an engrossing and vivid place where I was happy to stay. The Last Romantics is a richly observed novel, both ambitious and welcoming." - Meg Wolitzer
"Tara Conklin's The Last Romantics is a triumph of storytelling, an ambitious examination of the failures of love and how we, against all odds, find a way to survive. The writing is stunning, in service of a story that you won't be able to resist, pulling you deeper and deeper into a world that Conklin has so lovingly constructed. A complex, resonant work that will reshape your understanding of family."
- Kevin Wilson, author of The Family Fang
"An intimate, soul-searing examination of a modern family and the ties that bind, for better or worse." - Stefanie Hargreaves, Shelf Awareness Galley Love of the Week
