Rating: 
Summary: A delightful book
Review: It may be trite to say so, but I was wishing this book wouldn't end right from the first page, a reaction I seldom have. The book had a wonderful tempo and feel and was consistently engaging. I couldn't recommend it more highly
Rating: 
Summary: Would have made a fascinating longer read..
Review: 'The Wishbones' is a sharp, witty and fast read, which doesn't cover any revolutionary territory or come to any deep worldy conclusions. However, it is entertaining enough and undoubtedly better than Perrotta's latter works, namely 'Little Children'. However, I did not think it was quite as good as most reviewers have suggested, simply because it doesn't draw itself out long enough to develop anywhere important.
Perrotta appears to have a deep seated fascination with sex and adultery, and for this reason, his collection of works are not entirely dissimilar and can lack the drive and purpose they should. His characterisations are wonderfully developed and wildly humourous, yet because the plot doesn't develop, you come to question the purpose of these fantastic side-characters.
Basicially, I felt that 'The Wishbones' was well-written and beautifully voiced, but that it failed to clearly articulate a purpose or sense of artistic depth.
Rating:
Summary: Don't Miss it!
Review: Hey, it could happen to anyone. You're sitting in the basement of your girlfriend's parents' house, having stopped by there to tell her about how your wedding-band rehearsal went, and something about the way she uses snack foods to mark her place in her book, something about the way the leg of her sweatpants pushes up, causes a synapse to misfire, somehow. Suddenly, you hear yourself saying, "Let's get married," despite the fact that you've spent the thirty-one years of your life thus far avoiding commitment of any kind, never even having moved out of your parents' house. So now what do you do?
If you're Dave Raymond of the Wishbones, premier wedding band of suburban New Jersey, you goggle helplessly as events spin out of your control, watching your three little words create a wedding machine of invitations and favors and lists and dates and rehearsals and rings and gowns. You seek advice from your bandmates: Buzzy, the stoner-turned-family-man; Stan, who's falling apart now that his wife has left him; and Ian, the sexually ambiguous pretty boy with Broadway-musical ambitions. Oh, and you pick up an attractive bridesmaid at a gig, smoke a joint with her, and start cheating on your bride before you've even married her.
Tom Perrotta's prose is literary Ginsu. Every line, every bitingly funny description or subtle pop-culture satire, is a razor-sharp knife edge, slicing through and peeling back layers of the single American male's consciousness. What's at the heart? Lots of confusion, not enough willpower, but plenty of good intentions and wry, self-deprecating humor. It's tempting to call this the American equivalent of High Fidelity, and indeed, the two works have a number of similarities: humorously low-key and immature guy refuses to commit to loving and responsible girlfriend; guy embarks on an affair to prove something - he doesn't know what - to someone - he doesn't know whom; guy eventually realizes that the pros of having a girl around might outweigh the cons of having to grow up and settle down. But The Wishbones is a little more gooey, not playing every scene for laughs; Perrotta acknowledges that nothing is without its own brand of humor, but allows his characters to take things seriously, and really gets you worrying about them and hoping that things work out okay, for their sakes.
I'm about as un-Dave-like as a girl could get, but I know the type, and Perrotta does a wonderful job of creating a bunch of genuine, funny, rounded characters who make a lot of bad decisions and just enough good ones to balance it out. This is one of those books that makes you feel like the characters are your friends; reading the pages is like listening to a pal tell you the latest gossip about your social circle. Read it, buy it, recommend it to all your guy friends, whether they're single or in a relationship. Everyone needs to read this book! Along with THE LOSERS CLUB by Richard Perez, this is the best Amazon purchase I made this year. Don't miss it!
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: Tuxedos and Trombones
Review: If you've seen the movie The Wedding Singer, you're already familiar with the idiom of Tom Perrotta's The Wishbones. This is the story of Dave, a musician in a wedding band in the New Jersey of the 1980's, and how his life changes as he approaches his own wedding to Julie. He has been dating Julie for fifteen years "on and off", and once he's proposed his problem becomes not so much unrequited love as love too much requited. Though Dave is seen by his band-mates as rock steady and by himself as an all-around nice guy, the approaching wedding looms ahead like the end of his freedom and challenges him to make some unusual choices in his last summer as a single man. Aside from Dave, the other characters in the band each have their own story arc, well-painted by Tom Perrotta. Though I didn't find The Wishbones as funny as Perrotta's later novel Joe College, there was something poignant and almost naïve about it that was missing in the other work. A definite must-read for those who came of age in the 80's.
Rating:
Summary: Great book!
Review: The only downside to The Wishbones was that it wasn't long enough. It truly left me wanting more. Mandatory reading for any 30-something guy ready to take the plunge into marriage...and a little side note: The page on REM and Stipe was sheer perfection...Tom, you read my mind!
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