The Last Romantics
Ratings12
Average rating3.3
15
Ratings12
Average rating3.3
From the New York Times–bestselling author of The House Girl comes a novel about our most precious and dangerous attachment: family In the spring of 1981, the young Skinner siblings—fierce Renee, dreamy Caroline, golden boy Joe and watchful Fiona—lose their father to a heart attack and their mother to a paralyzing depression, events that thrust them into a period they will later call “the Pause.” Caught between the predictable life they once led and an uncertain future that stretches before them, the siblings navigate the dangers and resentments of the Pause to emerge fiercely loyal and deeply connected. Two decades later, the Skinners find themselves 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 what, exactly, they will do for love. Narrated nearly a century later by the youngest sibling, the renowned poet Fiona Skinner, The Last Romantics spans a lifetime. It’s a story of sex and affection, sacrifice and selfishness, deeply held principles and dashed expectations, a lost engagement ring, a squandered baseball scholarship, unsupervised summers at the neighbourhood pond and an iconic book of love poems. But most of all it is the story of Renee, Caroline, Joe and Fiona: the ways they support each other, the ways they betray each other and the ways they knit back together bonds they have fractured. In the vein of Commonwealth, Little Fires Everywhere and The Nest, this is a panoramic, tenderly insightful novel about one devoted, imperfect family. The Last Romantics is an unforgettable exploration of the responsibilities we bear both gracefully and unwillingly, and the all-important, ever-complex definition of love.
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This lands somewhere between a beach read and more serious fiction; there were certainly some beautiful descriptive scenes, and it had a bit of that can't-put-it-down quality, but ultimately it's a pretty standard, sometimes slightly cliche tale of a family tragedy.
There are four Skinner siblings in Tara Conklin's The Last Romantics. Renee is the oldest, the responsible one. Caroline, the next oldest, is soft-hearted and traditional. Then Joe, the only boy, the gifted athlete, the apple of everyone's eye. And finally Fiona, the baby. The Skinners are a happy family until they're not: when their father dies in an accident, their mother Noni finds out that they're not as well off as she thought, and the loss of not only her husband but the life she thought she had achieved pitches her into a deep depression. They downsize, and Noni takes to her bed. Not for a week or two, or even a month on two, but for a couple years. The Skinner children are more or less left to raise themselves during what they come to call The Pause.
The seeds of what will become of them are planted during The Pause. Renee takes her responsibilities to take care of the others seriously, and becomes dedicated to achieving at a level that will keep anyone from guessing what's going on at home, setting her down a path towards becoming a doctor. Caroline falls in with a neighbor family, forming a bond with one of their boys that will deepen into romance and marriage. Joe's talent and good looks ensure that his outward needs are met, even if he struggles to process his trauma. And Fiona learns to observe, a skill that comes in handy as she becomes a writer and poet. Noni does recover, and the family seems more or less intact, but the damage that's been done can't be undone.
I was biased towards this one from the start: this kind of following-a-group-of-characters-over-time thing is something I absolutely love in a book. I tend to find that the books that stay with me the most are ones where character is first and foremost, and this book is all about character. The siblings and their relationships feel complicated and real. Though they all had moments of being their worst selves, their behaviors felt rooted in how their experiences, particularly during their childhoods, interacted with their innate personalities. I also appreciated that the book never felt the need to have there be a dramatic confrontation between the children and their mother...it generally leaned away from melodrama rather than leaning into it, and I think there are plenty of families that do just try their best to forget the bad moments and move on.
As much as I loved this book for the most part, there were some plot elements that kept me from considering it truly great. First was that The Pause could go on for multiple years without anyone really noticing. As much as Renee was able to serve in loco parentis to her younger siblings, there are things like doctor's visits and parent-teacher conferences and signing up for extracurriculars that seem like they could have been patched over for a while but not for as long as Conklin asked us to believe. And then there was the framing device, which featured a very elderly Fiona (in a world where global climate change has changed things for the worse) interacting with a young woman who might have a connection to the Skinners. This did strike me as a little too convenient and neat. On the whole, though, this is a lovely book about the bonds between siblings and would be perfect for a reader who loves well-realized characters. I very much enjoyed it and highly recommend it!
The book was so close to connecting with me emotionally but failed, due to not focusing enough time on characters and the general framing of the story not being developed enough. It's obvious that Conklin is going for a Woolf-type of structure with characters being connected through a death that affects them all, but the framing is too erratic to truly enhance the themes in the way that Woolf does. The attempt to juggle many themes across a large timeframe is intriguing but doesn't ever feel developed enough. I do like how Conklin actually tries to reach for that goal, despite the general sense of wasted opportunity. I prefer an author trying to aim high rather than just stick to detached prose and a straightforward narrative.
3.5 Stars
The Last Romantics is a book about love. It focuses on one family, The Skinners, made up of Renee, Caroline, Joe, and Fiona and their mother, affectionately called Noni. We're told much of the story through Fiona's perspective as the lives of the Skinners are unraveled by their father's death and their mother's 3-year depression, and how the family attempts to stitch themselves back up again.
I want to start off by saying that adult contemporary is not normally my jam. I read this book as it was the Barnes and Noble Book Club pick for the month and I run the event every month at my store, and it was the first book that I've annotated probably since my high school years. I found myself engaged, reacting to the story, making predictions, etc. So, it wasn't an unenjoyable read in the slightest and it was a good book, but it just wasn't my favorite.
What kept this from being a 5-star book, or even a 4-star book, was that the climax was kind of a let down. There's all this build up for for 250 pages for something concerning one of the siblings (not going to say it out of respect for keeping spoilers out of my review) and then once it happened it was... a major let down. There were other elements as well that were not really explained and felt kind of out of place– such as Fiona working with a Climate Change organization and then the situation with Luna just felt so... incomplete?
