Rating: 
Summary: There's Nothing at the End of the Rainbow
Review: So sings the great contemporary troubadour, Richard Thompson, whose song title rings like a commentary on Tom Perrotta's wry, angular, strangely gripping Little Children, perhaps the most peculiar thriller this side of, oh, Ian McEwan. I say peculiar because Perrotta has assembled a compendium of male, mostly sexual, anxieties, given them names and histories, and melded them into four-fifths of a cracking good novel. And although the McEwan comparison is admittedly a stretch, long passages of Little Children induced physiological effects upon me, in my stomach, in particular, in much the same way McEwan does. But Perrotta's pallete is considerably brighter, positively Turneresque: all sunlight, radiant colors and blinding whites. Perrotta is, moreover, a satirist of effortless comic abundance. When I wasn't all knotted up, and even when I was, I smiled . . . and laughed loudly, it seemed, every third or fourth page (at one point, I confess, startling a sleeping spouse). An unusual thriller indeed. Everyone in Perrotta's Boston suburb is afflicted with the American disease: the pursuit of happiness - an American birthright - unfulfilled. Even the toddlers are disgruntled and, as a result, disagreeably demanding. Like Mom and Dad. Because the kids aren't the novel's eponymous "little children." These, you had to have known, are the "adults"--the parents, neighbors, and even new neighbor Ronnie, a convicted and now released child molester, perhaps worse, who adds a jittery element to the local chemistry. No one here can really seem to get any satisfaction in or out of their connubial relations and would-be attachments. Out of this Perrotta devises several paths down which his couples seek to work out their own human salvations. Perrotta has, I'm afraid, got men, their motives, and particularly male narcissism fairly well figured out. And like Nick Hornby, to whom one reviewer has compared him, Perrotta writes women with an observant and sympathetic eye. When the not-so-pretty Sarah scrutinizes every inch of herself in a mirror, wondering if she can be a suitable lover for Todd-the-Sensitive-Prom-King-Blond-Jock-God, you ache for her - and perhaps for your own homely self - in the center of your chest. Little Children, like Perrota's other books, falls between genres. He's not literary but is unusually perceptive, and he gets respectful reviews and spots on the "notable books" lists, largely for his honest, effortlessly fluent writing, sharp dialogue, and plainly recorded insights into real men and women. He's genuinely funny and knows how to pace a tale. The uncommonly clever patter and elements of tension almost obscure the fact that Perrotta's cast is a tad too carefully assembled from what must be a very conventional set of "character notes" - or is simply dropped in from central casting: the bombshell, the loudmouth, the tightass, the artist wannabe, the Redford, the creep. (Okay - "the creep" is very, very good, almost Rothian, a real 21st century type, "the horny websurfer," who is the protagonist of one of the book's most hilarious moments.) To Perrotta's credit, there's some overlap, and the characters pick up a measure of complexity. But we remain on familiar--albeit brightly illumined--ground here, and we sense a patness that doesn't have to be. That said, and despite a disappointing sag as Perrotta wraps up over the final 30 pages or so - from which judgment I exclude a fine closing paragraph - I could not set this book aside. It pulled me along like a tractor beam. Thus do I very easily recommend Little Children, and his The Wishbones (a Jersey wedding band! For me, terra cognita), and Election (which many of you will know, if only for the film). Do Sarah and Todd live happily ever after? It's worth an evening to find out.
Rating: 
Summary: Maybe I'm too close to the subject?
Review: I was ready for an excellent satire on life in the burbs with kids, and while I enjoyed the book and some of its insights, I'm still looking for that excellent satire.
Rating: 
Summary: Smooth look at suburbia
Review: What a wonderful yet disturbing portrait author Tom Perrotta has given us of suburbia, with its partially hidden dysfunction, its characters that seem flat on the surface, only to emerge with more deminisions that we'd care for them to have, and its allusions that are easily shattered. Remimiscent somehow of Woody Allen's movie "Interiors" or McCrae's book, "The Bark of the Dogwood," this stellar piece of fiction is colored with views rarely seen in the book world. It would make an excellent movie and someone is sure to attempt this. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in what suburbia is all about.
Rating:
Summary: Having affairs with boring people
Review: I've always been curious about what it must feel like for people who still consider themselves young to have children and settle into suburbia, into a life that just a few years earlier they would have thought bland and unexciting. Considering how widespread the experience of "settling down" is for people of a certain class, I've always been surprised that there haven't been more books written about this transition from youth to a more routine maturity. A review of Little Children in the New York Times made this seem like a book that was finally exploring this territory. After gobbling this book up in two days, I'm afraid it doesn't really explore that strange transition; it really doesn't explore anything at all. It skims over the surface of too many characters and too many events, and uses that oldest of devices - an extramarital affair - to sustain interest, without arousing interest in much else. When reading Perrotta's excellent description of a football game, I think I understood why: Perrotta writes like a movie. His smooth, readable prose translates easily into images, the plots dovetail in a contrived and predictable way, and the entire plot of the book is split up into short scenes just like film narratives. This book would be incredibly easy to convert into a screenplay, and I'm sure someone's doing just that. Like many writers whose first exposure to storytelling was through television and the movies, Perrotta seems to write more for the screen than the page. The problem with this is that he doesn't use the resources of the page, the most important of which is giving the characters a real interior life. Everyone in Little Children, from the people having the affair, to the spouses, to the child molester and his mother, is given a thumbnail personality, and a sketch of their personal history, but no one feels particularly alive; I didn't feel like I knew a single one of them. Which meant I didn't much care what happened to them. Good actors, and a sharp screenplay, could make this material feel more vibrant than it is. Election, already made from one of Perrotta's books, had incredible vitality, partially because it was more clearly satirical than Little Children, which walks the line between satire and realism, and ends up doing neither effectively. The little humorous touches are what work best: for example, the line about JFK Jr. being the patron saint of people who have failed the bar exam, since the fact that he failed twice is sympathetically mentioned to Todd every time his inability to pass is brought up. Other than these funny bits, the writing is good without ever being great. The big problem, I think, is that none of the characters have the power to surprise us. Todd and Sarah's affair proceeds in quite an ordinary way, the characters think thoughts that are always commonplace, and Perrotta ends with Todd's decidedly unrevelatory realization that his affair is exciting only because he is married. The thrill comes from the break in routine, not from the relationship with Sarah; the second Sarah replaces his wife as his primary relationship, he'll feel restless again. Well, obviously. If an author wants to startle us, he either has to force us to identify with his characters, or at least understand how they think (for example, with the child molester), or depict the social forces that create these dreary people. Or, finally, make the book so funny or entertaining that we don't care about how predictable the characters are. Perrotta throws in some outlandish plot developments, like Sarah's husband being obsessed with an Internet pornography site, and then going off to see the woman who runs it, but someone the husband still felt like the same boring old guy; I wouldn't have cared if he'd ended up being the porn queen's long lost brother. Now, if Perrotta's point is that these people just aren't that special, then I don't see why I should bother reading a book about them. The most interesting part of the book probably illustrates this. It comes in the book club that Sarah joins that is discussing Madame Bovary, the umbrella from under which all this infidelity-as-response-to-boredom literature emerged. Sarah says that Madame Bovary's problem wasn't that she was unfaithful, or excessively romantic, but that she committed adultery with losers, and never found anyone worthy of her heroic passion. Now, it isn't fair to compare every novel with old masterpieces, but Perrotta might have considered his own character's statement, and thought about whether anyone in his book either had, or was worthy of, that sort of passion. And, if not, why write about them?
Rating:
Summary: Couldn't put it down
Review: I didn't expect to read the entire thing in less than a day but it's impossible to let go of once you've started it. Perrotta is a skillful writer who doesn't overwrite or go off on tangents. It's a tightly constructed novel with great characters and utterly perfect dialogue. Sure, it's got a healthy satirical bite to it but there's a poignant, emotional honesty to the book that makes it stand apart from other recent suburban novels (thinking of A.M. Homes' more tragi-comic "Music for Torching"). I loved this book.
Rating:
Summary: Big Wallop from Little Children
Review: This wonderful novel should be a serious contender for
the Puliter Prize. To win, a novel must deal "with some aspect of
American life". I can not think of a recent novel that has so gloriously explored, in 350 galloping pages, so many aspects of life in suburbia.
Without giving a way too much, I thought the ending was
brilliant: four people who would seem to have absolutely
nothing in common, have a cigarette together. It was a
beautiful way to come to grips with one of the themes of the book: despite obvious external differences, most of us more in common with each other than we would ever dare to admit.
Rating:
Summary: Real Parents
Review: Little Children is the perfect follow-up to Election and Joe College. Tom Perrotta captures beautifully people falling into parenthood and a house in the suburbs and the ways in which they all deal with the shock of discovery that it has happened to them. The story is moved forward by the two leads, Todd and Sarah, having a kiss in the playground that develops into an affair and a child molester moving into the neighbourhood. The book is quite funny in the beginning as it gets the narrative smoothly flowing. It is a generous book to all of its secondary characters, even the ones the reader is not supposed to like. The author also nicely skirts around the melodrama inherent in the situation. A very satisfying read that captures perfectly how people with children actually behave.
Rating:
Summary: A Five Star Must Read!
Review: I borrowed a copy from a friend and had to buy my own. Once I started, I couldn't stop reading. This is a brilliant look at the underbelly of suburbia. Perotta's writing style is breezy and easy to read, yet sharp and multi-layered. A five star must read especially if you're a parent in suburbia. Debbie Farmer, parenting author of 'Don't Put Lipstick on the Cat'
Rating:
Summary: Anticipated Greatness
Review: Based on it's place on several best seller lists and very postive reviews I expected greatness. Instead, I found goodness within the pages of Little Children. That said, I still plowed through this book in two days, totally involved with the characters and plot. Perrotta is known as a great satirist but he picked some challenging material to satire. He runs through daily life of neighborhood moms, dads and their children with comic abandon. Their dynamics and petty jealous reactions drives the first section of the book at a glorious clip. Then you get more involved in the two main characters, Todd (a protrastinating daytime provider who is trying to pass his bar exam, but would rather watch skateboarders at the library or play adult testoterone tackle football) and Sarah, a woman dissatisfied with her role as mother and wife. The two of them start off flirting and race into a full fledged affair. The story has several dark clouds...some which even Perrotta cannot satirize. The town's father's and mothers attempt to battle Ronnie, a released child molester, lives close to the town pool and playground. Larry, an ex-cop and football buddy of Todd's uses full vigilence to force matters into his own hands. When things don't work he becames assaultive to Ronnie and Ronnie's mother, without successfully running Ronnie out of town. The other dark areas Perrotta presents is the institution of marriage. In Little Children, no couple is happy or healthy and there is no solution to fix this except leaving, having affairs or becoming involved in internet perversion. (The entire Slutty Kay section was hilarious). In fact, almost every character appears to be as uncomfortable in thier roles as Ronnie does in his own "house arrest". Perrotta ties his satirical hands behind his back and is still able to pull a literary Houdini. The book's prose is well-written, crisp and clean, without being self-indulgent. It's a breezy read into some heavy subject matter, not burdening the reader with its verbiage. I few wrong turns and you'd have either be overly sappy in the romance area with Todd and Sarah or a vehicle Stallone might want to star in. Thankfully you get neither.
Rating:
Summary: Compelling piece of literature
Review: (...) this highly stylized and multi-layered book is one of the most riveting reads I've come across in a while. The characters are some of the most beautifully drawn and the pacing of this stellar novel will keep your attention from beginning to end. I highly recommend this compelling piece of literature--it will surely take its place among the classics.
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