Rating: 
Summary: Chutes and Ladders for Adults
Review: Tom Perrotta grew up in Garwood, Union County. The Wishbones, Perotta's second novel, is set in New Jersey. If you're familiar with Union County, Route 22, and the Parkway in mid-Jersey, you'll figure it out. Perotta's first novel, Bad Haircut: Stories of the Seventies, was a splendid coming-of-age piece set in Jersey. His second novel focuses on the members of a "wedding band" who play weekends in those large multi-hall wed-ding factories along the Parkway. The band members have come of age chronologically, but they're still trying to shape roles for themselves. The book uses Dave Raymond's de-scent into marriage as its centerpiece.
Dave Raymond hasn't completely given up his dream of Rock & Roll success. But, he's put it on the back burner for so long he knows he's close to the end of the dream. Dave knows he's a good guitarist, but also knows he's not a great one. He realizes he can imi-tate the guitar playing greats about as well as any of the kids in the thousands of New Jer-sey garage bands. He knows ". . . if you set your mind to it and invested in the right giz-mos [you could] fool people for a couple of minutes into thinking you were Eric Clapton or Eddie Van Halen, or even Jimmy Hendrix." He can imitate, but he doesn't have a voice of his own, isn't talented enough to become one of the greats.
Life can be like the child's game of Chutes & Ladders. In the game, one false move sends you down a chute where you begin all over again. In life, each false move sends us screaming down a chute of ever narrowing possibilities. Late at night, in one of those fits of openness we're all sometimes plagued with, Dave suggests marriage to his off-and-on girlfriend of 15 years, Julie. By the next morning, his parents are congratulating him on settling down, while sharing the anxieties they had about his future only yesterday. By that evening, he's having dinner with his future in-laws and, for the first time ever, seeing his girlfriend in an apron making stuffed cabbages or some other homey dish.
Dave, a 32-year-old live-at-home-in-his-childhood-bedroom college drop out and some-times courier with a rusty Geo Metro, lives for music; it's his soul, even if it's only weekend wedding-factory music. Wedding bands, wedding photographers, wedding singers - they all know it's over. Perrotta shows this graphically when Phil Hart, a wed-ding musician for decades, dies of a heart attack while playing a try out for a wedding. Dave doesn't exactly see it, but his is Phil Hart's future.
Almost as soon as everyone else has announced his engagement, Dave meets an exotic poetess who lives in Brooklyn Heights and takes him to poetry readings. Brooklyn Heights can be exotic compared to the Jersey 'burbs, all poetesses are exotic, and her comfortable presence in New York City raises Dave's dreams to heights he seems not to have known before. She shows him the City in a way that causes him to lose "the sheep-ish I'm-from-New-Jersey feelings" that ruin all of our visits to the Big Apple.
Dave's dilemma reduces to one that is common to all of us: "He loved Julie. That was an indisputable fact. The problem was he wanted Gretchen." But Dave is already in the chute ending in marriage to his childhood sweetheart. That chute is being greased by every step he takes with Julie, every step Julie take on her own; and every push they get from their families. Julie is a reality; Gretchen, the exotic poetess is a goal. When Dave is with Gretchen he thinks about moving out of his childhood bed-room, living his dream of Rock & Role fame, anything but what's at the end of the chute he, himself, entered. Julie and Gretchen figuratively tear him apart - love, fidelity, home and hearth, these come with Julie's safety. Wonder, risk, fame and fortune - can Gretchen the poetess deliver these without risk?
The Wishbones is an easy, delightful read. Perrotta handles dialogue well and larger themes even better
Rating: 
Summary: Entertaining, FUN and full of Truth
Review: Tom Perrotta is the author that got me reading again after about 6 or 7 years. His three books "Election", "Bad Haircut", and "The Wishbones" are all great reads, the type of books that are hard to put down once you've started. I loved all three, but I think I like "The Wishbones" the most.
This book gives a real and humorous look at a the life of a 31 year old guitarist in a New Jersey wedding band. Dave Raymond, he's your ordinary slacker guy, still living at home with his parents and playing in a wedding band on the weekends. Dave is trying to delay adulthood as long as possible, but an eye-opening experience causes him to change his outlook and (accidentally) propose to his long-time girlfriend. Along the way, the book also chronicles his experiences in the band, anedcodtes about the band members, and his relationship with a mysteriously different second woman. Perrotta's writing is so understated but so hilarious and real. The guy hits it right on the head every time.
The other members of the Wishbones are all so different, but you can sympathize with each of them and understand where they're coming from. These characters bring the book from good to great. The funniest part of the book involves bass player's Buzzy's incident at the "Genial Jim" show. The book is both sad and uplifting at different parts, like real life. Don't miss it! Another entertaining book from Amazon that I liked tremendously, was THE LOSERS CLUB by Richard Perez. Both are highly recommended, lively and fun books.
Rating:
Summary: DISAPPOINTING....
Review: Tom Perrotta pushes his readers through the roller coaster of emotions that are experienced duiring the fleeting days of bachelorhood. The Wishbones has all of the ingredients to make a great read and I had aspirations of claiming it as a favorite.
Rating:
Summary: Dead On, Funny, Real
Review: What more can I say? I've been there...it's all true.
Rating:
Summary: Perrotta Speaks For Us
Review: Who is "us?" Well, we're the middle-aged white guys who grew up in the American suburbs during the late-Sixties and Seventies. In grade school we were electrified by the "Batman" TV series, argued about who the coolest Monkee was, and begged our mothers to let us stay up late and watch "Star Trek." We may have played in Little League, but we had more fun playing baseball, football, and basketball in the streets of our neighborhood. We were in Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts, but we didn't get very far with our merit badges. We delivered newspapers on our bicycles. We smoked cigarettes and manhandled pinball machines down at the bowling alley. We played spin-the-bottle with the girls in our church youth group. We desperately worked on growing our hair long. We listened to Creedence and The Guess Who, then Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, then Mahavishnu and Weather Report. We wore surplus Army jackets, bought ten-dollar "lids," and had blacklight posters on our walls. We understood that sixth-period coed P.E. was a brilliant tactical move. Nearly every Friday night we searched for the "big" party that was rumored. (It usually was pretty big, and always got busted.) We occasionally got into trouble, but mostly managed to escape by the skin of our teeth. We delivered pizza in old Corvairs and station wagons, while "Hotel California" played on the radio for the first of a million times. We wore our first polyester shirt. And, oh yeah--we played in rock bands at a time when the Shure Vocal Master P.A. was considered state-of-the-art, tuning could take half-an-hour, and there was no such thing as a monitor.Thank you, Tom, for telling our story.
Rating:
Summary: To live or to exist, that is the question.
Review: With the fear of death as his motivator, our main character pops the question to his long term girlfriend. She accepts and a date is set. Our story begins as our 31 year old main character commits to something, finally. He has lived at home in Jersey with good old Mom and Dad all his life working a part-time courier job. His passion is his band, the Wishbones, who on weekends rev it up at the local Holiday Inn banquet room and other suburban reception venues . He embarks on an affair with an urban hipster bridesmaid from the other side of the river, and the question is, will he or won't he be wearing that ring come the big day? Tom Perrotta is a fine writer who's sparse but precise use of language invokes vivid imagery and strong characters. The supporting ones are far more interesting than the narrator, in particular his bandmate who finds true love and follows his path to compose a hilarious musical. The sad sacks who populate this novel made me cringe. They want little from life and fear of failure has kept them from trying or doing much of anything. When someone interesting comes into our main characters life I found myself exhilarated thinking, finally. When our main character recedes and throw his hands up resigned to his "fate" I howled in protest. A novel that could involve me so strongly clearly has something going for it.
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