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Original Essays | June 12, 2013

Lian Dolan: IMG The Bard and Bridget Jones Meet in Elizabeth the First Wife

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I was lucky enough to have a fantastic Shakespeare professor in college. She brought the material to life with her vast knowledge and brought... Continue »
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25 Partner Warehouse Literature- A to Z

Little Children

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Little Children Cover

 

Review-A-Day

"[A] thread of moral fatalism may be more disturbing than any of the other really disturbing things in this novel. The precision of Perrotta's assault on domestic hypocrisy is frightening, to be sure. And if good satire can generate a corrective jolt, this may be a deadly shock." Ron Charles, Christian Science Monitor (read the entire Christian Science Monitor review)

Synopses & Reviews

Please note that used books may not include additional media (study guides, CDs, DVDs, solutions manuals, etc.) as described in the publisher comments.

Publisher Comments:

Tom Perrotta's thirty-ish parents of young children are a varied and surprising bunch. There's Todd, the handsome stay-at-home dad dubbed "The Prom King" by the moms of the playground; Sarah, a lapsed feminist with a bisexual past, who seems to have stumbled into a traditional marriage; Richard, Sarah's husband, who has found himself more and more involved with a fantasy life on the Internet than with the flesh and blood in his own house; and Mary Ann, who thinks she has it all figured out, down to scheduling a weekly roll in the hay with her husband, every Tuesday at 9pm.

They all raise their kids in the kind of sleepy American suburb where nothing ever seems to happen — at least until one eventful summer, when a convicted child molester moves back to town, and two restless parents begin an affair that goes further than either of them could have imagined. Unexpectedly suspenseful, but written with all the fluency and dark humor of Perrotta's previous novels, Little Children exposes the adult dramas unfolding amidst the swingsets and slides of an ordinary American playground.

Review:

"[An] intelligent, absorbing tale....Once again, [Perrotta] proves himself an expert at exploring the roiling psychological depths beneath the placid surface of suburbia." Publishers Weekly

Review:

"[A] complex, fast-moving plot....An accomplished comic novelist extends his range brilliantly. Perrotta's best." Kirkus Reviews

Review:

"[W]armly humorous prose....Perrotta, with a light but sure hand, expertly sketches the angst of the playground set and then amps up his material with a subplot involving a child molester. A fast-reading, wholly engaging novel." Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist

Review:

"[S]earing, compulsively readable....Combining rueful wit with a wonderfully creepy sense of foreboding, Little Children feels like what you might get if Nick Hornby collaborated with David Lynch." Newsday

Review:

"Little Children, like all Perrotta's work, is a virtuoso set of overlapping character studies....[A] greatly auspicious and instructive encounter with the dread world of maturity." Chris Lehmann, The Washington Post Book World

Review:

"Tom Perrotta's Little Children made me laugh so hard I had to put it down....[A] gentle, sparkling satire. (Grade: B+)" Jennifer Reese, Entertainment Weekly

Review:

"What a wicked joy it is to welcome Little Children, Tom Perrotta's extraordinarry novel....Bracingly tender moments stud Perrotta's satire....[A]t once suspenseful, ruefully funny and ultimately generous." Will Blythe, The New York Times Book Review

Review:

"Mr. Perrotta is too generous a writer to trivialize [his characters' yearnings]. What distinguishes Little Children from run-of-the-mill suburban satire is its knowing blend of slyness and compassion." Janet Maslin, The New York Times

Review:

"The cast is so real that book groups will have a blast comparing people they know to the ones in the book. Perrotta is that rare writer equally gifted at drawing people's emotional maps and creating sidesplitting scenes. Suburban comedies don't come any sharper." People Magazine

Review:

"Perrotta's poignant and unflinching prose skillfully evokes both sympathy for his characters and disdain for the convenience they have chosen." Library Journal

Review:

"Perrotta has been likened to an American Nick Hornby. With Little Children, he solidifies his reputation as a top comic novelist, and becomes something more, one of the most talented chroniclers of American suburban family in the new millennium." Hartford Courant

Review:

"The eponymous children in this satirical novel are actually adults who, chafing at the burdens of parenthood, try to re-create their unencumbered youth...The humor is sometimes cruel, but Perrotta never betrays the complexity of his characters." The New Yorker

Review:

"Perrotta's most ambitious book...it marks a leap for Perrotta, a suggestion that there may be bigger books inside him. It is also that rarity, a book that understands the mature wisdom of compromise without denying any of the accompanying melancholy." Charles Taylor, Salon.com

Review:

"Perrotta wisely refuses to condescend to the world he satirizes, and his masterful perspective provides the reader with a breezy omniscience over the character's failures in life....[A] brave novel...engrossing, compassionate." Esquire Magazine

Review:

"[A] generous serving of laugh-out-loud moments....Perrotta knows the white-picket fence dream is just that. Life is disappointing, sure, but a little bit of breezily sardonic humor goes a long way to ease the pain." USA Today

Review:

"[A] story that is timeless and placeless yet rock-solid in its appeal. With easy flowing, uncomplicated prose and a keen ear for dialogue, he has added another layer to what is becoming an impressive and durable body of work." Boston Herald

Review:

"For all its surface appeal and adroit cultural references, Little Children is a novel about time and the way it catches everyone, whether they are running or standing still....[It] is a book that will stand the test of time." The Oregonian (Portland, OR)

Review:

"To detail the plot is to diminish its pleasures. Perrotta's scenes sneak up on you. He primes you to expect the worst and then delivers something more credible and amusing, developing his characters' emotions in potent and surprising ways." Los Angeles Times

Review:

"With this, his fifth book, Tom Perrotta has to be considered one of our true geenius satirists. Little Children is a great book. Hilarious (I haven't laughed out loud so much over a book in years) but also deeply compassionate and, at times, terrifying. It's both an indictment of, and an elegy to, that odd sociological construct known as suburban America. I was enthralled by every page, and damn if I didn't find myself wishing I'd written it." Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River

Review:

"Tom Perrotta...is like an American Nick Hornby: companionable and humane, lighthearted and surprisingly touching." Newsweek

Synopsis:

Tom Perrotta's thirty-ish parents of young children are a varied and surprising bunch. There's Todd, the handsome stay-at-home dad dubbed "The Prom King" by the moms of the playground; Sarah, a lapsed feminist with a bisexual past, who seems to have stumbled into a traditional marriage; Richard, Sarah's husband, who has found himself more and more involved with a fantasy life on the internet than with the flesh and blood in his own house; and Mary Ann, who thinks she has it all figured out, down to scheduling a weekly roll in the hay with her husband, every Tuesday at 9pm.

They all raise their kids in the kind of sleepy American suburb where nothing ever seems to happen-at least until one eventful summer, when a convicted child molester moves back to town, and two restless parents begin an affair that goes further than either of them could have imagined. Unexpectedly suspenseful, but written with all the fluency and dark humor of Perrotta's previous novels, Little Children exposes the adult dramas unfolding amidst the swingsets and slides of an ordinary American playground.

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About the Author

Tom Perrotta is the author of Bad Haircut, The Wishbones, Election, and Joe College. He lives in Belmont, Massachusetts.
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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 2 comments:
Coni, January 30, 2007 (view all comments by Coni)
It covers people in the early thirties in suburbia who have become trapped by their lives and come to find they don?t know the people they are married to. While the affair storyline isn?t really anything new, it was completely interesting to read. I could not put this book down once I started. I became antsy when it moved to another character that wasn?t Tom or Sarah, but then once I started reading about that person and how they related the bigger picture, I was caught back in it again. All the secondary characters are well-written and ones that you might hate at first, you sympathize with later on
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Deborah Fochler, October 31, 2006 (view all comments by Deborah Fochler)
A story that takes a funny look at a not so funny subject - child molestation and abuse and neglect.
This book is laugh out loud funny but at the same time
delivers a message about horrible experiences. The mark of a true master - take a hard to swallow pill and make it fun to take. What this author had done - given us an almost impossible to read story and make it fun
and terribly funny. I loved it .
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(30 of 51 readers found this comment helpful)
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780312315733
Author:
Perrotta, Tom
Publisher:
St. Martin's Griffin
Subject:
General
Subject:
General Fiction
Subject:
Literary
Subject:
Literature-A to Z
Copyright:
2005
Edition Number:
Reprint ed.
Edition Description:
Trade paper
Publication Date:
January 2005
Binding:
TRADE PAPER
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Pages:
368
Dimensions:
8.25 x 5.5 x 0.875 in
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Related Subjects

Arts and Entertainment » Film and Television » Novelization
Fiction and Poetry » Literature » A to Z
Fiction and Poetry » Literature » Sale Books
History and Social Science » American Studies » Popular Culture

Little Children Used Trade Paper
0 stars - 0 reviews
$8.00 In Stock
Product details 368 pages Griffin - English 9780312315733 Reviews:
"Publishers Weekly Review" by , "[An] intelligent, absorbing tale....Once again, [Perrotta] proves himself an expert at exploring the roiling psychological depths beneath the placid surface of suburbia." Publishers Weekly
"Review A Day" by , "[A] thread of moral fatalism may be more disturbing than any of the other really disturbing things in this novel. The precision of Perrotta's assault on domestic hypocrisy is frightening, to be sure. And if good satire can generate a corrective jolt, this may be a deadly shock." (read the entire Christian Science Monitor review)
"Review" by , "[A] complex, fast-moving plot....An accomplished comic novelist extends his range brilliantly. Perrotta's best."
"Review" by , "[W]armly humorous prose....Perrotta, with a light but sure hand, expertly sketches the angst of the playground set and then amps up his material with a subplot involving a child molester. A fast-reading, wholly engaging novel."
"Review" by , "[S]earing, compulsively readable....Combining rueful wit with a wonderfully creepy sense of foreboding, Little Children feels like what you might get if Nick Hornby collaborated with David Lynch."
"Review" by , "Little Children, like all Perrotta's work, is a virtuoso set of overlapping character studies....[A] greatly auspicious and instructive encounter with the dread world of maturity."
"Review" by , "Tom Perrotta's Little Children made me laugh so hard I had to put it down....[A] gentle, sparkling satire. (Grade: B+)"
"Review" by , "What a wicked joy it is to welcome Little Children, Tom Perrotta's extraordinarry novel....Bracingly tender moments stud Perrotta's satire....[A]t once suspenseful, ruefully funny and ultimately generous."
"Review" by , "Mr. Perrotta is too generous a writer to trivialize [his characters' yearnings]. What distinguishes Little Children from run-of-the-mill suburban satire is its knowing blend of slyness and compassion."
"Review" by , "The cast is so real that book groups will have a blast comparing people they know to the ones in the book. Perrotta is that rare writer equally gifted at drawing people's emotional maps and creating sidesplitting scenes. Suburban comedies don't come any sharper."
"Review" by , "Perrotta's poignant and unflinching prose skillfully evokes both sympathy for his characters and disdain for the convenience they have chosen."
"Review" by , "Perrotta has been likened to an American Nick Hornby. With Little Children, he solidifies his reputation as a top comic novelist, and becomes something more, one of the most talented chroniclers of American suburban family in the new millennium."
"Review" by , "The eponymous children in this satirical novel are actually adults who, chafing at the burdens of parenthood, try to re-create their unencumbered youth...The humor is sometimes cruel, but Perrotta never betrays the complexity of his characters."
"Review" by , "Perrotta's most ambitious book...it marks a leap for Perrotta, a suggestion that there may be bigger books inside him. It is also that rarity, a book that understands the mature wisdom of compromise without denying any of the accompanying melancholy."
"Review" by , "Perrotta wisely refuses to condescend to the world he satirizes, and his masterful perspective provides the reader with a breezy omniscience over the character's failures in life....[A] brave novel...engrossing, compassionate."
"Review" by , "[A] generous serving of laugh-out-loud moments....Perrotta knows the white-picket fence dream is just that. Life is disappointing, sure, but a little bit of breezily sardonic humor goes a long way to ease the pain."
"Review" by , "[A] story that is timeless and placeless yet rock-solid in its appeal. With easy flowing, uncomplicated prose and a keen ear for dialogue, he has added another layer to what is becoming an impressive and durable body of work."
"Review" by , "For all its surface appeal and adroit cultural references, Little Children is a novel about time and the way it catches everyone, whether they are running or standing still....[It] is a book that will stand the test of time."
"Review" by , "To detail the plot is to diminish its pleasures. Perrotta's scenes sneak up on you. He primes you to expect the worst and then delivers something more credible and amusing, developing his characters' emotions in potent and surprising ways."
"Review" by , "With this, his fifth book, Tom Perrotta has to be considered one of our true geenius satirists. Little Children is a great book. Hilarious (I haven't laughed out loud so much over a book in years) but also deeply compassionate and, at times, terrifying. It's both an indictment of, and an elegy to, that odd sociological construct known as suburban America. I was enthralled by every page, and damn if I didn't find myself wishing I'd written it."
"Review" by , "Tom Perrotta...is like an American Nick Hornby: companionable and humane, lighthearted and surprisingly touching."
"Synopsis" by ,
Tom Perrotta's thirty-ish parents of young children are a varied and surprising bunch. There's Todd, the handsome stay-at-home dad dubbed "The Prom King" by the moms of the playground; Sarah, a lapsed feminist with a bisexual past, who seems to have stumbled into a traditional marriage; Richard, Sarah's husband, who has found himself more and more involved with a fantasy life on the internet than with the flesh and blood in his own house; and Mary Ann, who thinks she has it all figured out, down to scheduling a weekly roll in the hay with her husband, every Tuesday at 9pm.

They all raise their kids in the kind of sleepy American suburb where nothing ever seems to happen-at least until one eventful summer, when a convicted child molester moves back to town, and two restless parents begin an affair that goes further than either of them could have imagined. Unexpectedly suspenseful, but written with all the fluency and dark humor of Perrotta's previous novels, Little Children exposes the adult dramas unfolding amidst the swingsets and slides of an ordinary American playground.

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