Tara Conklin, author of Community Board, in conversation with Joanna Rakoff [05/01/24]

Porter Square Books is thrilled to welcome Tara Conklin for the paperback release of her novel Community Board! Author Joanna Rakoff will join Conklin in conversation. This event will take place on Wednesday, May 1 at 7pm at Porter Square Books (25 White St. Cambridge, MA 02140).

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ABOUT COMMUNITY BOARD

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, [email protected]

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?

PRAISE FOR COMMUNITY BOARD

“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

“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

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Tara Conklin was born in 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.

Joanna Rakoff is the author of the international bestselling memoir My Salinger Year and the bestselling novel A Fortunate Age, winner of the Goldberg Prize for Fiction and the Elle Readers’ Prize. Rakoff’s books have been translated into twenty languages, and the film adaptation of My Salinger Year opened in theaters worldwide in 2021 and is now streaming. She has been the recipient of fellowships and residencies from MacDowell, Sewanee, Bread Loaf, Jerome Foundation, Authors’ Guild, PEN, Ragdale Foundation, Art OMI/Ledig House, and Saltonstall; and has taught at Columbia University, Brooklyn College, and Aspen Words. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, O: The Oprah Magazine, Vogue, Elle, Porter, and elsewhere, and her new memoir, The Fifth Passenger, is forthcoming from Little, Brown in 2024.

Tara Conklin, author of Community Board, in conversation with Joanna Rakoff

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