Poet Alan Michael Parker (Cry Uncle) has concocted a piece of surrealist Americana with a strongly postmodern sensibility. As hinted at by the title, The Committee on Town Happiness is an unusual narrative structured as a series of minutes from the meetings of a group that claims to be that curious municipal body. If the committee is to be believed, the town is an idyllic slice of small-town America--full of well-regulated food trucks, scenic hot-air-balloon rides and a tight-knit community of "Like-Minded Individuals."
It's clear from the opening lines that the town and the committee are not at all what they claim to be: "We have been thinking about the trees. The trees, we have decided, know what they're doing. We have decided (6-3, with one abstention) that there will be trees in the Afterlife." The committee is a micromanaging superego, prone to awarding arbitrary values to everything and anything. "Daily joy, 3. Lurking suspicions, 3. Moderation, 4. Finicky responses to stimuli, 4. Faith in the Committee on Town Happiness, n/a." It slowly comes to light that a group known as Danger for Fun, the town's uncontrollable id, is threatening to bring their carefully constructed system tumbling down. Or perhaps Danger for Fun is an invention of the Committee itself, an enemy constructed to distract attention from the terrifying, constantly encroaching Edge of Town and the void beyond.
The social commentary is occasionally heavy-handed, but the book is strongest when Parker lets his dry wit shine. The Committee on Town Happiness is crisply surreal, an odd little experiment that succeeds in spite of itself. --Emma Page, bookseller at Wellesley Books in Wellesley, Mass.