$6.95
List price: 13.95
You save: $7.00
TRADE PAPER, USED
Ships in 1 to 3 days
| Qty | Store | Section |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | Burnside | Literature- P |
| 1 | Local Warehouse | Literature- P |
| Hide store locations | ||
Little Children
by Tom Perrotta
|
|
|
About This Book
ISBN13: 9780312315733 |
Powells.com Staff Pick
"What really makes Little Children shine is its theme of isolation. Never before have I laughed so much and so enjoyed a book whose message was so essentially sad....I closed the covers feeling sober, alone, and delirious from the sheer rush of the narrative. It's a feeling I cannot equate with any other novel I've read." Chris Bolton, Powells.com (read the entire Powells.com review)
Review-a-Day (What is 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
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
About the Author
Tom Perrotta is the author of Bad Haircut, The Wishbones, Election, and Joe College. He lives in Belmont, Massachusetts.
What Our Readers Are Saying
Add a comment for a chance to win!
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
-
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 .
View all 2 comments
Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9780312315733
- Author:
- Publisher:
- St. Martin's Griffin
- Subject:
- General
- Subject:
- General Fiction
- Copyright:
- 2005
- Edition Number:
- Reprint ed.
- Publication Date:
- January 2005
- Binding:
- Paperback
- Language:
- English
- Pages:
- 355
- Dimensions:
- 8.22x5.60x.95 in. .74 lbs.
