Synopses & Reviews
For many college students, spring break means fun and sun in Florida. For Danny, a Yale junior, it means two weeks behind the wheel of the Roach Coach, his father's lunch truck, which plies the parking lots of office parks in central New Jersey.
But Danny can use the time behind the coffee urn to try and make sense of a love life that's gotten a little complicated. There's loyal and patient hometown honey Cindy and her recently dropped bombshell to contend with. And there's also lissome Polly back in New Haven-with her shifting moods, perfect thrift store dresses, and inconvenient liaison with a dashing professor.
If girl problems aren't enough, there's the constant menace of the Lunch Monsters, a group of thungs who think Danny has planted the Roach Coach in their territory.
Joe College is Tom Perrotta's warmest and funniest fiction yet, a comic journey into the dark side of love, higher education, and food service.
Review
"[P]erfectly pitched, subversively hilarious....It all zips along in ineffably reader-friendly fashion, rising to splendid comic heights....[A] marvelous finale....Joe College almost makes you wish you could relive the whole godawful mess all over again." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"[A] smart, engaging novel....Perrotta treats these people fairly no one is better or worse than anyone else. The 'poor' kids don't come out on top in the end. You don't hate the rich ones....Every character, like Joe College itself, is lovable, resonant and memorable." Suzy Hansen, Salon.com
Review
"[A]n absorbing, fleshed-out portrait of an American male edging toward adulthood by crossing seemingly rigid social boundaries....[F]ull of funny, dead-on observations." Maria Russo, The New York Times Book Review
Review
"Revealing the inner workings of a Roach Coach is just one of the delights of Joe College. Readers will revel in Perrotta's gift for telling detail....Hilarious...Perrotta transforms '80s nostalgia into art." Entertainment Weekly
Review
"Perrotta is in full control of his quirky comic sensibility....The novel leaves some loose ends hanging, but...that comes as a relief a reminder that art, like life, isn't perfect after all." Publishers Weekly
Review
"It takes a sharp eye and a light touch, not to mention a fine memory for embarrassment (this book is set in the early 1980's, and at one point Danny dances à la John Travolta), to take on the back-to-school genre as knowingly as Mr. Perrotta has." Janet Maslin, The New York Times
Review
"[F]ast-paced, funny, and provides valuable insights into an era that somehow seems more than a single generation past." George Needham, Booklist
Review
"An antic novel of academia and the middle class....Perrotta's forte is balancing the seriousness of Danny's emotional dilemma with comic barbs hurled at academic chicanery." USA Today
Review
"Perrotta, one of America's best-kept literary secrets, isn't likely to stay unknown much longer. He's at his ruefully funny best in this bittersweet comedy about a working-class boy from New Jersey at Yale circa 1980." Newsweek
Synopsis
Joe College is Tom Perrotta's warmest and funniest fiction yet, a comic journey into the dark side of love, higher education, and food service.
About the Author
Tom Perrotta is also the author of
Election (made into the acclaimed 1999 movie starring Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon),
The Wishbones, and
Bad Haircut. He lives in Belmont, Massachusetts, and is a 1983 graduate of Yale.