Review: Community Board (by Tara Conklin)

My Rating:  3.5 stars

I read Tara Conklin's previous novel The Last Romantics and absolutely loved it!  That book was so well-written, with characters that were memorable albeit not always likable, an emotional story arc, and a plot that unfolded slowly but still had a good balance of surprising moments that felt both poignant and genuine.  Given the above, it should come as no surprise that, as soon as I found out Conklin would have a new book out this month, I jumped at the chance to read it.  While there were aspects of her new novel, Community Board that appreciated and even enjoyed, I didn't really take to the book overall as much as I did her previous one.  Perhaps my expectations were too high going into this one, which I thought would be in the same vein as The Last Romantics, but of course, turned out to be entirely different.  

The story revolves around main protagonist Darcy Clipper, who, driven by the heartbreak of her husband leaving her for another woman, returns to the small town of Murbridge, Massachusetts where she grew up.  Expecting to be consoled by her parents, she is disappointed to find that they had left on a trip to Arizona without telling her.  Darcy then shuts herself inside her childhood home in a self-imposed period of isolation where she shuns all contact with the outside world and subsists primarily on a diet of Chef Boyardee and chickpeas.  During this solitary period, Darcy spends most of her time alternately feeling sorry for herself, blaming her friends and family for abandoning her, and reading decades-old issues of National Geographicmagazine cover-to-cover.  Her only contact with the outside world, for the most part, is through the community board where the residents of Murbridge post various updates and messages related to their little town.  After a few months, Darcy starts to run out of food and, not wanting to ask her parents for money (because she is still mad at them for not being there to take care of her), she has to find a way to make money, which finally forces her to venture out of the house.  She ends up working for a guy named Marcus Dash-Lagrand, who had just moved into Murbridge with his husband Dan and their 3 sons, and through increased interactions with the family (as well as a handful of others), she slowly emerges from her shell and, more importantly, learns that she can indeed survive on her own.

The format of the story consists of mostly a third-person narrative interspersed with Darcy's emails (ones that she drafts but never sends out and ones that she actually does send) and posts from the Murbridge community board.  I thought this format was interesting and effective — I especially enjoyed the community board posts, which I recognized as being similar to the quirky stuff I typically see on my local neighborhood's community board.  I also liked the humor that permeated much of the story line — sure, some of it was cynical and raunchy and borderline outlandish at times, but for some reason, it worked in this instance (which is saying something because I usually prefer more subtle humor — "slapstick"-type humor is generally a hit or miss for me).

With all that said, what didn't work for me was Darcy's self-imposed isolation and self-absorbed pity party taking up nearly half of the story.  I'm not opposed to characters having to work out their feelings after facing a difficult situation, but the setup here was a bit too excessive in my opinion.  Darcy essentially spends the first half of the story revisiting over and over again everything that is wrong with her life; alternating between blaming her husband (for having an affair), her friends (for abandoning her), and her parents (for coddling her and doing too much for her); and depriving herself of proper sleep, nutrition, and hygiene. At first, I did feel sorry for Darcy, but after having to spend page after page (after page after page) absorbed in her complaints, I started getting increasingly annoyed and frustrated.  Luckily, in the second half of the story, Darcy finally ventures out and allows herself to interact with people in the community, which is when things actually started to get interesting.

Overall, I would say that, while I don't regret reading this one, I wish I hadn't gone into it with such high expectations.  Definitely lesson learned!

Received ARC from Mariner Books via NetGalley.

Review: The Last Romantics (by Tara Conklin)

 My Rating: 4 stars

This was a book that I very nearly devoured in 2 sittings if it weren’t for the fact that I had work and family obligations I had to take care of, so I ended up finishing the last dozen pages or so just now (turned out to be 3 sittings, not 2).   In all honesty, when I first picked up the ARC of this book and read the summary, my expectations weren’t too high, as the premise sounded like it would be yet another story about sibling rivalry and complicated family dynamics – both familiar topics that have featured in plenty of the books I’ve read over the past few months.  This one turned out to be different from what I expected, but in a good way.

At the heart of the story is the Skinner family – the father Ellis Avery, the mother Antonia (whom everyone in the family refers to as “Noni”), their 4 kids Renee, Caroline, Joe, and Fiona – living in the middle-class town of Bexley, Connecticut in the 1980s.  When 34-year-old Ellis dies suddenly and unexpectedly (he literally drops dead in the middle of working), his 31-year-old wife Noni finds herself thrust into widowhood with 4 young children in tow (the eldest Renee was 11 years old at the time, the youngest Fiona was only 4 years old), but even more shocking is the realization that her husband had left behind very little in terms of savings, causing the family to fall into dire financial straits not long after the funeral.   This plunges Noni into a deep depression that causes her to retreat into her bedroom for days at a time, “resting” with the door closed, curtains drawn, and lights off, leaving the 4 Skinner siblings to essentially take care of themselves, though Renee, as the eldest daughter and most responsible one, steps up to care for her siblings in their mother’s absence.  This went on for 2 to 3 years, a time period that the siblings later collectively refer to as “the Pause.”  Though their mother eventually emerges from “the Pause” and together, the family is able to pick back up the pieces and move on, a few defining things happen during this time period that will end up affecting the siblings for the rest of their lives.  In the decades that follow, though each sibling grows up and leads their separate lives, they are not able to escape the inevitable ties that bind them together as a family. 

This was an interesting story that ended up being surprisingly engaging for me.  I was absorbed into the Skinner family’s story from the start and as each chapter progressed, alternating between each sibling’s backstory, this family grew on me and I found myself rooting for each character throughout their many trials and tribulations.  The writing was exceptional and even flowed “poetically” in certain parts (which is significant given that the main character Fiona, whose perspective the story is told from, starts off in the story as a renowned poet) – the smoothness of the writing helped draw me into the story quite quickly and kept me engaged throughout.  With that said though, my one minor complaint was the odd way that the story was narrated throughout the book, jumping from Fiona’s first-person perspective (since the way things are setup, she is actually telling the story of her family from a future time period) to a quasi-third person perspective starting each chapter about her siblings, but then in the middle of the chapter, it switches back to Fiona’s first-person perspective.  I will admit that this format was a little jarring for me, especially the first few chapters, but I guess later on I got used to it so it didn’t bother me as much.  I don’t really know how to explain it – perhaps it’s the way the story was told, but I felt that there was an addictive quality to the story that made me want to continue reading even when I knew I should stop (i.e.: it was getting late and I needed to get some sleep in order to function properly at work the next day)…there were times where I felt a certain “urgency” to find out what will happen next to each of the characters as they deal with the issues that crop up and what their fates end up being when all is said and done.

As might be inferred from the title, it can be said that this book is about “love” in its many different forms:  love between a couple in a relationship (romantic love), love between family members – whether parent to child or between siblings (familial love), love between friends, casual love, selfish love, unconditional love, subtle love, etc. but in a big way, this book is also about the failures of love and the disappointment, regret, and pain that come along with it.  With all that said though, this book is NOT a romance novel nor is it a love story in the traditional sense of the word – in fact, despite the title, there is actually very little “romance” in here.  If I had to describe this book in a few words, I would classify it as a “family epic” that explores the complexities of life, love, relationships, and how the individual choices we make at different points in our lives impact and shape our futures.

I didn’t realize at first that this is the author Tara Conklin’s second novel – her debut novel was actually The House Girl, which was published back in 2013.  I haven’t read that one yet and I heard it’s a completely different genre (historical fiction versus contemporary fiction with this one), but it’s definitely going on my TBR now – hopefully I’ll get around to reading it some time soon!

Received ARC from William Morrow / Harper Collins via Edelweiss