What To Expect From The "Clarissa Explains It All" Novel

Clarissa Darling is returning in book form with the upcoming novel Things I Can't Explain. Let's speculate about the plot.

Clarissa Darling is coming back.

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She's 23. She's working as a journalist. And — according to the title of the novel — there are things she can't explain.

You know what that means, right?

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We can finally forget about THIS abomination.

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For those not in the know, Clarissa Now was a failed pilot for a series that would have shown us Clarissa as a working journalist in New York. Hey, that sounds a lot like Things I Can't Explain. Hopefully the book will be better.

Details of the novel are pretty hush-hush. But that doesn't mean we can't make up our own plot points.

Clarissa and Sam are totally doing it.

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Was there ever a doubt in anyone's mind? I'm not saying these two are going to end up together, but come on, they've fallen into bed with each other. Entertainment Weekly teases that in the novel, Clarissa has "unexpected feelings for a really cute guy who — of course — has an on-and-off again girlfriend." Sam, obviously.

Ferguson is a proud member of the Log Cabin Republicans.

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Surprise: he's gay. And a Republican, but we knew that already. You might have thought Ferguson's coming out would have changed his political leanings, but no, he remains a staunch economic conservative, along with his college boyfriend, Glen.

Clifford and Clarissa still hang out sometimes. He's into her, but she's hung up on Sam.

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Then again, he's less appealing than he was in high school. Now he's all clean-cut and listens to a lot of smooth jazz.

Marshall and Janet were separated for a while. They're cool now, though.

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In fact, the time apart brought them closer together. Janet's cooled it with the health food, and when she does cook something with tofu, she knows how to make it taste edible. Meanwhile, Marshall's architecture has become much more subdued. He's getting a lot more work and is designing buildings people would actually use. In this economy, he can't afford to entertain his former flights of fancy.

Clarissa is OK, all things considered.

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Therapy helps a lot. It's just that adulthood is tough, and the challenges of being a twentysomething in the big city can't always be remedied with a hastily made computer game. She's enjoying her work as a reporter, though she worries journalism might be a dying industry. In her spare time, she thinks about other career paths — namely game design and fashion. She already has an idea for a clothing line named after her late Aunt Mafalda. (R.I.P. Aunt Mafalda.)

Rest assured, this will ultimately be a story of triumph.

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Clarissa can't explain it all, but she does eventually figure it out. (Perhaps with the help of Figure It Out host Summer Sanders!) It doesn't matter if she can make it work with Sam, or find a way to settle for Clifford — Clarissa has always been fiercely independent. Who needs a man at all when you're Clarissa MFing Darling. The novel ends with Clarissa finally feeling like she has a grasp on her life as an independent woman. Na na na na na na indeed.

Or maybe we're way off-base. What are your Clarissa novel predictions?