Brilliantly funny ( )

Not quite as close to perfection as the Abstinence Teacher or The Wishbones, but pretty close. The flaw: just because you know so much about your characters, like what happened to the quasi-buddy that didn't go to college, it's really beside the point and the plot in this novel.

But still ... the Jersey boy, the smart Italian boy at Yale in the 1980s with student loans to pay off. It all sounds and feels about right. The class lines, for lack of a better term, are blurry, complicated. You think you've heard more than enough about Yale but there's something new: who ever had a clue where the Whiffenpoofs (and there are more singing groups like this!) fit in?

The details of why the summer girlfriend--who goes to a state college or community college part-time, studying business--just doesn't fit into the Yale life or the long-term life plan. Her clothes, her hair, her maddening conversation.

Oddity: Perrotta seemed to know so much about pop music of different eras in The Wishbones and yet music, which is so much a part of the fabric of college life, doesn't get much play. And what does gets mentioned doesn't get much space in this novel and what does, doesn't seem very particular to the year. Springsteen, case in point. (Should be in here: what music is cool at Yale and what the summer girlfriend *loves*.)

Why isn't this a movie yet? ( )

While I can't say that my college years would make a great source of comedy (other than maybe a peek at my transcripts), Perrotta was the writer responsible for the novel that the movie Election was based on, and that film did such a good job of squeezing laughs from the awkward high school years that I had high hopes for Perrotta's take on college.

Joe College mined its humor from the junior year of Danny, a Yalie who can't quite shake his blue-collar roots. The story moves between Danny's life and (struggling) love life at school in New Haven and his life and (problematic) love life at home in New Jersey, where he spends his school breaks manning his father's lunch truck, the "Roach Coach."

Both stories were filled with plenty of off-kilter characters, and there was plenty of comedic tension anytime Danny's two worlds collided. The problem was that those collisions didn't happen often enough to keep the story interesting. Perrotta allowed both New Haven and North Jersey to have numerous story lines, many of them very funny, but there were so many little episodes centered around so many eccentric friends in both locales that it was hard to keep track of who had what idiosyncrasy.

Since Danny mostly played straight man to all these oddballs, his own story wasn't strong enough to move the story along. Add to that the fact that Danny (like most college students) often came off as so immature and self-centered that it was hard to like him and you've got a leading character who is tough to like enough to care about him and a supporting cast so large that you can't remember them enough to care about them. Not a good combination.

Joe College wasn't a horrible book, but it was still a disappointment. The most telling sign of my disappointment with this novel was how long it took me to get through it. It wasn't so bad that I gave up on it, but it wasn't strong enough for me to look forward to picking it back up. Thus, it seemed to take forever to finish a relatively small novel. ( )

Joe College was not nearly as good as Perotta's Little Children, but brings the rider along on the Roach Coach for an amusing ride. While the ride provides some interesting Yale scenery, the destination leaves a lot to be desired. ( )