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Little Children (Paperback)

by Tom Perrotta (Author) "THE YOUNG MOTHERS WERE TELLING EACH OTHER HOW TIRED they were ..." (more)
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (70 customer reviews)
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Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

The characters in this intelligent, absorbing tale of suburban angst are constrained and defined by their relationship to children. There's Sarah, an erstwhile bisexual feminist who finds herself an unhappy mother and wife to a branding consultant addicted to Internet porn. There's Todd, a handsome ex-jock and stay-at-home dad known to neighborhood housewives as the Prom King, who finds in house-husbandry and reveries about his teenage glory days a comforting alternative to his wife's demands that he pass the bar and get on with a law career. There's Mary Ann, an uptight supermom who schedules sex with her husband every Tuesday at nine and already has her well-drilled four-year-old on the inside track to Harvard. And there's Ronnie, a pedophile whose return from prison throws the school district into an uproar, and his mother, May, who still harbors hopes that her son will turn out well after all. In the midst of this universe of mild to fulminating family dysfunction, Sarah and Todd drift into an affair that recaptures the passion of adolescence, that fleeting liminal period of freedom and possibility between the dutiful rigidities of childhood and parenthood. Perrotta (Election; Joe College; etc.) views his characters with a funny, acute and sympathetic eye, using the well-observed antics of preschoolers as a telling backdrop to their parents' botched transitions into adulthood. Once again, he proves himself an expert at exploring the roiling psychological depths beneath the placid surface of suburbia.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.


From Booklist

Perrotta sent up the foibles of high-schoolers in Election (1998) and of Ivy Leaguers in Joe College (2000). Here, in warmly humorous prose, he takes on the thirtysomething parents of young children. Handsome stay-at-home dad Todd, dubbed the Prom King by the moms at the playground, secretly grooves to Raffi and loves staging horrific train wrecks with his young son; he has flunked the bar exam twice and can sense his wife's increasing exasperation, but he can't force himself to study. Although Sarah has a Ph.D. in feminist studies, she is completely flummoxed by her toddler's temper tantrums and her husband's seeming infatuation with a pornographic Web site. Sarah and Todd fall into an unlikely affair, and although they know they are acting out of desperation to escape problems on the home front, their relationship is full of electric sex and genuine emotion. 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
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews

70 Reviews
5 star:
 (42)
4 star:
 (16)
3 star:
 (5)
2 star:
 (6)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.3 out of 5 stars (70 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Little Flat, Jun 16 2004
By S. A. Cartwright "Stu Cartwright" (Wayland, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Little Children (Hardcover)
I was disappointed in Tom Perrotta's writing. Purportedly a fictional expose of our crass American suburban culture, "Little Children" turns out to be little more than a 350 page soap opera. It begins in the hotbed of suburbia, at a playground with a handful of yuppie mothers, and so the book holds great promise. Perrotta introduces us to some characters we all can recognize instantly. Frat boy Todd, spandex-clad Mary Ann, practical careerist Kathy, newly retired and bored-at-home Jean, and intellectually under-challenged Sarah cope with various problems and uncooperative spouses. Then there are the characters that add color to the gray suburban landscape: Ronnie the child-molester, Larry the ex-cop on a vendetta, and Richard the web fantasy surfer.

Unfortunately the book drags these characters through a much too lengthy and predictable melodrama. Larry harasses Ronnie, Sarah makes a move on Todd, Kathy tries to save her marriage...the novel turns away from what could have been a good satire about suburbia and instead drones on like a dime-store romance. Who will end up with whom in the end? Who cares?

This book would have been much better had Perrotta concentrated on his characters more intently. They hold such promise. Instead they end up flat, shallow stereotypes who move through a lame plot.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Big Babies, Jul 3 2004
By Catfish_Hunter (Oak Park, Il) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Little Children (Hardcover)
After reading many reviews touting Perrotta's brilliant writing in this book, I must say I am sorely disappointed with it. The characters, as other readers have pointed out, are hardly likeable (the only one I had any feelings at all for was the child molester, the best developed character in my opinion), but if the book had been better that might not have mattered to me as much. As it was, I found myself skimming through the unbearablly long football scenes and predictable plot line that made up the last third of the book. For my money, a better, certainly more entertaining look at similar (though admittedly not the same) people can be found in "The Nanny Diaries."
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars too thin, May 23 2004
By John Farrell (Boston, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Little Children (Hardcover)
Mr. Perrotta writes well, but he's not T.C. Boyle, whom I think would've handled this material with more edge. Too often the author here assumes the reader will share his contempt for the characters without more dramatically showing why. I can't help noticing here a whiff of the creative writing class at work. The sameness of style that comes out of graduates of writing programs these days is depressing, especially the ubiquitous but apparently fashionable loathing one is supposed to have for middle class Americans. Mr. Perrotta has it in spades.

The character of Sarah is well drawn, but the rest of the cast is just too thin. Larry the cop (with a stale back story right out of 'Die Hard') and Todd's wife, who supposedly makes documentary films--but in neither case does Mr. Perrotta succeed in painting real people. Todd's wife never says a word about her crew, her budget, or her equipment. Add to this the rather contrived attempt to create suspense at the end with poor Ronnie the child killer and you have an unsatisying read.

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 		 Most recent customer reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars We are all Little Children Trying to Get Through Life
Often if I see a movie I really like Ill read the book, which is what happened with Little Children. Read more
Published on April 29 2007 by Teddy

5.0 out of 5 stars Not so little and certainly not childish
Modern marriage and suburbia are thrown on the barbeque and thoroughly cooked in this dark, biting and witty satire. Read more
Published on Aug 10 2005 by Jesse Robando

5.0 out of 5 stars Perrota changes direction -- and delivers again!
This time around, Perrotta takes satirical aim at the stifling confinement of suburban middle-class existence. Read more
Published on Jul 2 2005 by Derrick Weston

2.0 out of 5 stars Naked Suburbia - Veneer Ripped & Stripped Away
Although this was a well-written book, I didn't care for most of the characters.

Dramatis Personae:

Sarah, an immature bisexual housewife who is disinterested in her... Read more

Published on Jun 3 2005

5.0 out of 5 stars Perrota changes direction -- and delivers again!
This time around, Perrotta takes satirical aim at the stifling confinement of suburban middle-class existence. Read more
Published on Jun 1 2005 by Sharon Turner

2.0 out of 5 stars Naked Suburbia - Veneer Removed
Although this was a well-written book, I didn't care for most of the characters.

Dramatis Personae:

Sarah, an immature, boorish bisexual housewife who is disinterested... Read more

Published on May 31 2005

5.0 out of 5 stars Perrota changes direction -- and delivers again!
This time around, Perrotta takes satirical aim at the stifling confinement of suburban middle-class existence. Read more
Published on May 8 2005 by Sharon Turner

5.0 out of 5 stars Evokes Images of the Best
There is a dark undercurrent in YOU REMIND ME OF ME that is oddly refreshing because of the biting sense of reality. Read more
Published on Mar 29 2005 by Susan Barringer

5.0 out of 5 stars Sad but true
Tom Perrotta's portrait of suburbia gone wrong is at once wonderful and yet sad. The protagonists (if you can call them that) are faced with the awakening that their lives are... Read more
Published on Oct 25 2004 by John Vanderhoos

4.0 out of 5 stars Witty and fun
I really enjoyed this book. I smiled, I laughed, and ultimately I nodded. What Perrotta says about suburbia (what I remember of it, having fled it years ago) is true, but this... Read more
Published on Sep 5 2004

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