Community Board: A Novel

by Tara Conklin

Overview

The New York Times bestselling author of The Last Romantics delivers a wise, timely, big-hearted novel of unplanned isolation and newly forged community.

Where does one go, you might ask, when the world falls apart? When the immutable facts of your life—the mundane, the trivial, the take-for-granted minutiae that once filled every second of every day—suddenly disappear? Where does one go in such dire and unexpected circumstances?

I went home, of course.

 MURBRIDGE COMMUNITY MESSAGE BOARD

FREE: 500 cans of corn. Accidentally ordered them online. I really hate corn. Happy to help load.

REMINDER: use your own goddamn garbage can for your own goddamn pet waste. I’m looking at you Peter Luflin.

REMINDER: monthly Select Board meeting this Friday. Agenda items: 1) sludge removal; 2) upkeep of chime tower; 3) ice rink monitor thank you gift. Questions? Contact Hildegard Hyman, [e-mail]

Darcy Clipper, prodigal daughter, nearly thirty, has returned home to Murbridge, Massachusetts, after her life takes an unwelcome left turn. Murbridge, Darcy is convinced, will welcome her home and provide a safe space in which she can nurse her wounds and harbor grudges, both real and imagined.

But Murbridge, like so much else Darcy thought to be fixed and immutable, has changed. And while Darcy’s first instinct might be to hole herself up in her childhood bedroom, subsisting on Chef Boy-R-Dee and canned chickpeas, it is human nature to do two things: seek out meaningful human connection and respond to anonymous internet postings. As Murbridge begins to take shape around Darcy, both online and in person, Darcy will consider the most fundamental of American questions: What can she ask of her community? And what does she owe it in return?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062959393
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	01/15/2021
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	115,774
File size:	1 MB

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.  

Editorial Reviews

01/02/2023

Conklin’s quirky but undercooked latest (after The Last Romantics) follows the travails of a brokenhearted woman as she returns to her Massachusetts hometown. Darcy Clipper, 29, works as a junior actuary and lives with her husband, Skip, in Boston. When Skip announces he’s leaving her, she retreats to Murbridge, hoping for a warm embrace from her parents. To her surprise, they’ve just relocated to Arizona, where they’re “trying out” a retirement community. Hunkered down in her parents’ house, she insists they come back, but after weeks of solitude, she reluctantly starts looking for work. Through some odd jobs, Darcy makes new friends like Marcus Dash-LaGrand; his husband, Dan; and their three kids. Newcomers to town, Marcus and Dan hope to build a playground and open their backyard to the children in the community, a plan that homophobe local Jake—who has his eyes on their property—tries to thwart. Coincidences and surprise revelations involving Jake’s scheming lead to a showdown at a town meeting, where the playground’s fate is decided. The plot is paper-thin and the tone too cutesy, but Conklin ably conveys Darcy’s state of arrested development, as well as her transition into a stronger person who strives to help her friends despite her anxieties. This is far from life-changing, but there’s fun to be had. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

A brilliant, hilarious look at modern-day community and the distance between who we are and who we say we are. Insightful, honest, and surprisingly sly. I loved this book.” — Maria Semple

“Oh, how I loved this delightful, unputdownable novel! A pitch-perfect comedy of manners, a balm for difficult times, a charming coming of age story, Community Board is ultimately the literary equivalent of a warm hug.”
— Joanna Rakoff, bestselling author of My Salinger Year

“I can’t believe how good this book is! Tara Conklin once again dazzles with a hilarious, heartfelt, and wholly original tale. She writes about depression and grief with such a light touch, and her mesmerizing sentences immediately draw you into this quirky and fun community—one I was sad to leave behind! Read this!”
— Etaf Rum, author of the New York Times bestseller A Woman Is No Man

“Sometimes we’re not ready to jump. We need a little push. When Darcy Clipper — a heroine for the ages — gets a major shove, she finds herself in a brave new world of second chances, radical decisions, and transformative change. Funny, cinematic, and heartfelt, Community Board is a propulsive delight.” — Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Exiles

"Timely and hilarious! For all its madcap glory, COMMUNITY BOARD is a sweet and surprisingly plausible tale for our time."
— Jonathan Evison, author of Small World

“Tara Conklin’s brilliance jumps from the pages of this quirky delicious delight. I loved every second of this fabulous take on community and the on-line board that unites them.”
— Jane L. Rosen, author of Eliza Starts a Rumor

"A bittersweet, laugh-out-loud novel...Community Board is a crafty send-up about one woman struggling to come to terms with—and rebuild—her battered self-esteem.... Darcy may seem a poor soul, but her sharp, bright, enlightened mind—and her snarky, lovably endearing narrative voice, supplemented with zany e-mails and community posts—will easily win the affection of readers rooting wholeheartedly for her reinvention." — Shelf Awareness

“Conklin delivers a winning third novel, with Darcy’s smart, introspective voice at the heart of it. Her unconventional adventures (often hilarious, always interesting) drive home the importance of community and how important it is to show up and participate.” — Booklist

“Conklin has created a heartening look at a community whose people realize they're better together than alone.” — Kirkus Reviews

“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 on The Last Romantics

“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 on The Last Romantics

“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) on The Last Romantics

“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 on The Last Romantics

From the Publisher

A brilliant, hilarious look at modern-day community and the distance between who we are and who we say we are. Insightful, honest, and surprisingly sly. I loved this book.”

New York Times bestselling author Maria Semple

2023-01-25
The story of a woman trying to isolate herself from the world and the town where she’s holed up.

It's 2019, and 29-year-old Darcy Clipper returns to her hometown of Murbridge, Massachusetts, after her husband, Skip, leaves her for a sky diving instructor. As an only child, she hopes to escape into the comfort of her parents' care, but when she arrives at her childhood home, she discovers her folks have moved to a retirement community in Arizona and didn't tell her because they didn't want to upset her. Fortunately, they're not planning to sell their house for a while. Darcy spirals into a circle of depression, grief, and self-isolation. Her only contact is with an online community message board and a police officer who's called to the house regularly by spying neighbors accusing her of trespassing. She pages through her parents' National Geographic collection and doesn't leave the house all winter until she eats her way through the canned food her mother stored in the basement ahead of Y2K. Then, with only a few cans of chickpeas left, her point of view starts to shift. After a shower and a good primal scream, she decides to get more involved in the community, albeit in tiny chunks punctuated by extreme social anxiety. Searching for missing pets posted on the community board, she finds the reward money easy and the outdoor air and blooming tulips good for her mood. Her confidence lifts through her interactions with other people, including chance encounters with bird-watchers and a job working for Marcus, one of the town's newest residents, who wants to build a public playground on an empty lot next to his house. As spring turns into summer, the community board becomes a place of threats and protests against the playground, spurred on by a corporate developer who wants to turn the land into a casino. Darcy must decide whether to take a stand or return to the walls of her childhood bedroom. Readers feel Darcy's isolation through the first quarter of the novel and, like the main character, relax into the enjoyment of getting to know the quirky lives of those who populate the neighborhood.

Conklin has created a heartening look at a community whose people realize they're better together than alone.

Kirkus Reviews