Joe College

Danny. He's a student at Yale. His parents are hard-working, but with minimal means. He has girlfriend troubles. Its New Jersey, 1982. So, we've got coming of age issues, class issues, the classic struggle to fit in. I was not sure that this would be the right backdrop for good comedy.

Early on there was an essay on highlighters that had me practically crying I was laughing so hard. Perrotta's choice of language was priceless and superb. But that was the last time I laughed. I think the characters - Danny, his college friends, his parents, the NJ crowd - were all grounded solidly in the times. They were a little bit of cariacatures, but not over the top. So, maybe that explains why I didn't think they were funny. Even the Lunch Monsters show more - the competing lunch trucks run by the mob - were not funny. How Danny hapelessly runs amok of them. Not realistic and not funny. The things that seemed the most real, were a little bit sad. If I hadn't been feeling a bit nostalgic, I would not have continued.

I still gave it 3 stars. It was easy to read, mildly interesting, and a reasonable representation of the time and place. It was not compelling or funny. show less

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 show more 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? show less

I had a mixed experience reading Joe College.

At first I tore into it - I loved it - I felt like the pages were just flying - but then all of a sudden it slowed. I found myself choosing to do other things rather than reading more.

I did finally push through and I liked it just fine. I am a fan of Tom Perrotta's. This is the 3rd book of his that I have read in about a year. I love his casual smart style. I think his characters are really well formed. The people and conversations smack with realism.

I think I finally did put my finger on what slowed this down for me. It was the whole father/lunchtruck/mafia subplot. I found it depressing, cringeworthy and distracting from the other plot lines I was really enjoying.

Anyway - I still liked show more this book overall - I would recommend it to someone who already likes Perrotta - but I dont think it's the best one of his to start with if you haven't read him before. show less

good, not great. fun to see the daily life of a lunch truck driver. also got a view into the life of an Ivy League student, but those scenes didn't hit quite as well for me.

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 show more 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. show less

I love Little Children and Abstinence Teacher but I am afraid this is not a great book. I found it difficult suspend disbelief and ultimately I didnt like the main character. The other characters are not drawn out enough to make them clear and relatable and I kept getting confused about who was who. Like other people have said I loved it at the start but it went down hill. Shame, but I still like his other books.

I loved the films Election and Little Children, which were made by different people but both adaptations of books by Tom Perrotta. I figured if both movies turned out that well, the source material must be really good. So I read his book The Abstinence Teacher and loved that too. As a result I went into Joe College with high expectations, and I ended up a bit disappointed.