Tom Perrotta

There is no one who can beat Tom Perrotta when it comes to identifying and sympathizing with, and being appalled by, the miseries of middle class white people. His gentle humor permeates every one of his novels, and this one, his sequel to Election, works its jaundiced view on a suburban high school, the principal, vice-principal, school committee, and the pompous richest-guy-in-town, who proposes a misbegotten school Hall of Fame. The vice principal and main character is none other than show more Tracy Flick, a/k/a Reese Witherspoon in the movie Election, who personifies a striver who can't get anyone to like her because she doesn't see the purpose of it. Tracy has lost her beloved mother, has a daughter who spends most of her time with her father and stepmother, and squelches her loneliness, channeling it into ambition for the retiring principal's job. The ending, reflecting circumstances that are all too common these days, offers punishment and redemption.

Quote: "He was a big man with a white mustache who severely overestimated his own charm." show less

Tom Perrotta, in this novel and in his outstanding "Little Children", writes amusingly and poignantly about everyday people obsessed by dirty sex. Eve Fletcher, divorced, a supervisor at a senior home, sends off her immature jock son Brendan (who avoids moving his college luggage into the car by receiving a well-timed blow job from his ex-girlfriend) and falls into a world of online MILF porn viewing. In his first semester (at a very accurately portrayed yet un- named U Mass Amherst), show more Brendan runs afoul of a feminist who doesn't react well to his porn-based verbal commands and is publicly humiliated, flunks out, and slinks off back home.

As usual in Perrotta-world, supporting characters take their strong, foible-filled turns in the narrative, including Eve's co-worker Amber; nineteen year old Julian, who was bullied in school by Brendan and is sexually haunted by Eve; Margo, a transvestite teacher who falls for one of her male students; and Brendan's father, who, having left Eve for a "second chance" at a new life, is the father of an autistic son with his new wife.

And the set pieces, frat parties and a three-way and a lecture by Margo at Eve's assisted living facility, are hilarious.

This is not his best effort, but every Perrotta book carries guaranteed pleasures: you will cringe, you will laugh aloud, you will empathize. show less

I find everything that Tom Perrotta writes to be about as readable as books get. The downside is that I find them as forgettable as I find them readable.
In more recent novels his characters and plots are becoming more memorable. In The Leftovers Perrotta's growth in these areas is almost irrelevant because of the absolute brilliance of the premise at the heart of his novel: an inexplicable rapture (rupture?) that undermines and destabilizes ordinary lives. It so cleverly and monolithically show more stands in for the many existential black holes that are repressed in our lives, principally death and in particular the deaths of those we love. For some in the book nothing helps. For others time, reconnection, routine help. Mostly though, in The Leftovers, there is an overall sense of diminishment, that "though much is taken", not so "much abides". show less

It was easy for me to be swept up in the voices of Perrotta's characters telling what appears to be a low-intensity story of a high school election. Amid the comic circumstances are some uncomfortable realities about male objectification of women, molestation, abuse of power, blaming victims, the struggle for self-esteem, and the cultural acceptance of unacceptable crimes.