Little Children: A Novel

Little Children: A Novel
by Tom Perrotta

Little Children: A Novel
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Book Summary Information

Author: Tom Perrotta
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-01-01
ISBN: 0312315732
Number of pages: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

Book Reviews of Little Children: A Novel

Book Review: The Inner Child
Summary: 5 Stars

Tom Perrotta's "Little Children" has been described as many things - satire, compassionate, engaging - but no one word can sum up the powerful force that is this novel. At times laugh-out-loud funny, at others disturbing, "Little Children" is a modern day tale of adults who haven't quite learned how to grow up. It is an insightful look at the fears that plague parents, and adults who have realized that life hasn't turned out quite as they expected it to.

The story focuses around its two main characters, Sarah and Todd, but also brilliantly interweaves a cast of various characters to flesh out the suburban neighborhood Perrotta describes during the course of one summer. Sarah is a lapsed feminist surprised to find herself in a boring marriage and eking out an existence as a stay-at-home-mom. Todd, nicknamed "The Prom King" by the moms at the local playground, is the former jock, a rare stay-at-home dad who has failed the bar exam twice. When Todd and Sarah meet, the electicity between them is blinding, and the two quickly begin an affair with little regard to anyone who might get hurt. Their neighborhood also gets quite a shakeup with the return of Ronnie McGorvey, a convicted child molester who may or may not have something to do with a young girl's disappearance years ago. McGorvey, unable to work because of his criminal past, finds himself living with his elderly mother and hating every minute of it, as the two of them find themselves to be the target of a hate-filled vendetta of the local committee for concerned parents.

Throughout the course of the novel, as Todd and Sarah continue their affair, Perrotta peppers his narrative with glimpses into the lives of other characters, as well as into the pasts of the main characters. The title "Little Children" is indicative of numerous things - the children these adults long to protect from a predator within their neighborhood, Mrs. McGorvey struggling to understand her only son's proclivities, and the adults who have somehow not become what they wanted to be when they grew up (if they even did grow up). As Todd and Sarah's relationship drives blindly to a climax which forces each of them to be realistic about their futures, Perrotta manages to craft an almost tender look at Ronnie McGorvey that will make readers emphathize with him in spite of their disgust at his actions. "Little Children" is a brilliant novel, with Perrotta showing flashes of Tim O'Brien in his honest depiction of human beings and their frailties and failures.

Summary of Little Children: A Novel

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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