The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin is the moving story of the family bonds that both save us and tear us asunder.
''...this is a story about the failures of love, and the Pause was the first." from The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin
Fiona Skinner, 102 years old and a renowned poet, returns to the podium for the first time in twenty-five years. A girl arises from the audience with a question: Who was Luna?
The Luna of Fiona's most famous poetry inspired women to name their daughters Luna. And this girl, named Luna, asks for her mother the question--who was Luna?
Fiona wrote the poem "a lifetime ago," "back when I was a romantic," she responds. The girl presses. And for the first time ever Fiona reveals the story of her family and the secret she has held in her heart for so long.
"Once upon a time," she begins, "there was a father and a mother and four children...and for a time they were happy."
And like Fiona's audience, enrapt, I was carried away by her story of the ways love carries us and fails us and how we turn from each other and how we carry each other. Her story of love's truth, it's bitterness and how it is the only thing that makes life endurable, and our deeply held illogical hope, which experience tells us is fantasy, that love can and will save us.
And that is all I am going to tell you. I still feel the warm heartache, the fullness and pressure in my chest, the awful truth I encountered in this fiction.
Look around at your beloved family, the people you have given yourselves to, the people who cut the deepest and brought the fullest healing, who made you strong and brought you to your knees. The people you endeavor to protect and save, the people you have lost and haunt you. And tell me--what is love?
I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
by Tara Conklin
William Morrow
publication February 5, 2019
$26.99 hardcover
ISBN: 9780062358202
ISBN 10: 0062358200
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