Things I Can't Explain

A complete re-imagining of the 1990s television hit Clarissa Explains it All as 20-something Clarissa tries to navigate the unemployment line, mompreneurs and the collision of two people in love.

She was a smart, snappy, light-hearted girl who knew it all at fourteen and let television audiences everywhere know it. Now a woman in her late twenties, her searching blue eyes are more serious, but mostly amused by the people around her. The gap-toothed smile that made her seem younger than she really was is gone, but she still lightens up the room. Her unpredictable wardrobe rocks just like when she was a kid, but her fashion sense has evolved and it makes men and women turn their heads.

After leaving high school early, Clarissa interned at the Daily Post while attending night school. At the ripe old age of twenty- two she had it made - her own journalism beat (fashion, gender politics and crime), an affordable apartment in FiDi and a livable wage. She was so totally ahead of the game. Ah, those were the days! All three of them. Remember the Stock Market Crash of 08? Remember when people actually bought newspapers?

All of Clarissa's charming obsessions, charts, graphs, and superstitions have survived into adulthood, but they've evolved into an ever-greater need to claw the world back under control. Her mid-twenties crisis has left her with a whole set of things she can't explain: an ex-boyfriend turned stalker, her parents' divorce, a micro relationship with the cute coffee guy, java addiction, "To-Flue Glue," and then there's Sam. Where's Sam anyway?

Things I Can't Explain is about knowing it all in your teens and then feeling like you know nothing in your twenties. It is an entertaining and must-read sequel to all fans of Mitchell Kriegman's Nickelodeon TV show, Clarissa Explains It All.

MITCHELL KRIEGMAN has published in The New Yorker, Los Angeles Review of Books, The National Lampoon, and Glamour among others. Winner of four Emmy Awards and the Director's Guild Award, Kriegman created the groundbreaking television series Clarissa Explains It All. He was also the executive story editor on Ren and Stimpy, Rugrats, and Doug as well as a writer and filmmaker for Saturday Night Live. His first novel Being Audrey Hepburn was published in September 2014.