Community Board
A Novel
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
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, HHMurbridge@gmail.com
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?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
