The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin

 Tara Conklin’s examination of the Skinner family in her book The Last Romantics begins in the dystopian future where Fiona Skinner, 102 year old poet of renown, is speaking and answering questions about her body of work and more particularly, her famous piece “The Love Poem.”  A young girl’s remarkably familiar looking face sends Fiona’s mind back in time to 1981 when her life and the life of each of her siblings changes forever.  It was in 1981 that Fiona’s 31 year old father dies suddenly hurtling the family into chaos.  This was the beginning of “The Pause”  a three year period where Fiona’s mother goes to her bed and rarely emerges.  The four children were for all intents and purposes left to care for themselves and remarkably they survived.  That is not to say they thrived as they were all damaged by this time of their life.  It actually seemed that they devolved into more of a wolf pack than a family.  The oldest sister took total control of the siblings much like the alpha wolf controls their pack. As the alpha, Renee secured the food, determined the pack territory and oversaw its safety; she was in the position to demand complete respect.  Caroline, the second oldest, became the caregiver/mother and was dependent on Renee for confirmation and direction. Joe, the lone son, was the darling of the family, the golden child, but he was also the warrior/protector. Fiona, only 4 years old at the time of her father’s death, was the “baby” and therefore not given responsibility.  So, for three years this group lived nearly a feral life. Unfortunately, they were so scarred they never really recovered.  The description of their lives as they became adults was a picture of estrangement, distance and avoidance.  They all seemed to want to be left alone to live disconnected from people even though they were caught up in self destructive lifestyles. This novel was interesting and yet there were too many anomalies in the structure that took away from the overall storyline.  Why, for instance, did we have a vague and yet disturbing connection to global warming in the bookend future time at the beginning and ending of the novel? Why the title The Last Romantics when there was little in the book that demonstrated deep love.  It seemed the opposite was much more apparent.  These characters did not know how to love because they had been forced into a life of survival as children where sadly love was not demonstrated to any of them by the adults with whom they came into contact. This was a book that was a split decision at the very least.  The writing was very good, the descriptions were jarringly realistic, but the overall structure left something to be desired. 

Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane

 I have really scratched my head over Mary Beth Keane’s book, Ask Again, Yes and how to best summarize it.  It is really a difficult book to pin down in a short paragraph.  I finally decided to just put it out there and let the chips fall where they may. The novel is a well written, compelling character study.  You will learn much from this novel about love and hate, mental illness and addiction, jealously and control, abuse and obsession and families with dysfunction.  That seems very bleak I realize and much of the story is heartrending at best, but the strong central theme found throughout is that there is love in spite of all the pain.  The father figure after his own near death experience, after seeing his daughter struggle with a husband’s alcoholism and after watching most of his friends suffer through tragic life experiences agrees with his wife when she says, “I think we’ve been luckier than most.”  Our lives are not promised to have only good times, our lives are not promised to be stress free and our lives are not under our control most of the time.  But, we can look back like Keane and say “we have been lucky.”