The House Girl by Tara Conklin7/3/2023 ![]() I needed a certain degree of distance and. These seemed like two conflicting narratives goals. I wanted to write a story that spanned the characters' lifetimes, but I also wanted to examine my generation-the choices that I've made and my friends have made about family. Why did you select this narrative format? The story is told from the future and narrated by the 102-year-old poet Fiona Skinner. But the core happening at the center of the book is true to the real event. ![]() By that point in time, I also wanted to investigate some of my own concerns about women, care-giving, marriage, children and career, and the three Skinner sisters were a perfect vehicle. It took about 10 years before I sat down to explore these issues with the fictional Skinner family. The juxtaposed stories of a slave girl in 1852 and a lawyer in 2004 combine to create a beautiful examination of freedom, identity, family, desire and obligation. These questions-about all the big things like family, loss, success and love-lodged themselves in the back of my brain. The House Girl is a rarity, a novel that succeeds in fulfilling the highest of aspirations. As details emerged over the weeks and months following the event, I found myself asking so many questions about why and how the tragedy had unfolded. The original inspiration for this book came from a family tragedy that happened many years ago. She is assigned to work on a case involving slave reparations. Lina's story unfolds in present time, where she is an up-and-coming attorney. ![]() ![]() She is close with the mistress of the house, who is very ill. What was the inspiration behind The Last Romantics? Josephine is the house girl of the title, which is a nice way of saying that she is a slave who works in the house. Interview Tara Conklin discusses the inspiration behind her novels, The House Girl and The Last Romantics ![]()
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