Little Children

The lesson I gathered from LITTLE CHILDREN is that from the perspective of author, Tom Perrotta, most people are hitchhikers with no destination; they accept rides from strangers and go wherever that ride takes them for good or for ill. More specifically, most people only pretend to know what they're doing, pretend they've made choices. All that these people have really chosen, Perrotta seems to be saying, is misery and confusion. It's a story about seeing versus blindness. Beauty can blind us to faults and imperfections. And an unattractive exterior can likewise obscure the human sameness of one person to another. We can choose not to see the truth about others. Just as easily, we can hide who we truly are even from ourselves.In LITTLE CHILDREN, Perrotta puts the housemother story on its head with handsome housedad, Todd. Todd takes his 3-year old son, Aaron to the park, plays with him, sings Raffi songs with him and actually likes it! When Sarah, mother of 3-year old, Lucy tells him that the other mothers call him the `Prom King,' he is as pleased as Sarah would be if someone were to call her a `suburban woman.'Where you may find a problem calling Todd and Sarah a hero or heroine, is probably at the same crossroads in the story that I began to feel a little conflicted (which a-c-t-u-a-l-l-y takes place pretty early on in the story). It may be that where you come out on the moral conflict presented by the relationship between Todd and Sarah will decide whether you like LITTLE CHILDREN. I hope not, because I think it has independent value notwithstanding that.When the story begins, Todd is supposed to be preparing to take the bar exam...for the third time. His gorgeous wife, Kathy is an up-and-coming director ready to have Todd become "a successful lawyer, making enough money to support the family in the style she believed they deserved to live, while at the same time freeing her to have more children (and more child care), and to work only when she wanted, and only on projects she believed in." She doesn't care that Todd doesn't want to be a lawyer (and never really did)...or that in lieu of passing the bar he's really learned how to grill a mean salmon fillet.Meanwhile, Sarah is living a life that she blames on one "moment of weakness." There is no other way for Sarah to explain how she ended up married to a man with questionable sexual habits/fetishes. And though she tries to fit into the cookie-cutter suburban lifestyle, Sarah's tendency to forget to pack her daughter's snack every once and awhile as well as the fact that she has not perfected the art of being tired and complaining about it like the other mothers, makes it unlikely that she will ever be anything but an outcast among this exclusive set.The questions I had to ask myself were: (1) Is Sarah an adulterous, immoral fool or a courageous heroine, brave enough to search for love-to want more for herself (your answer may change a couple times between the beginning and the ending); and (2) Is Todd just an immoral jerk looking for someone who will validate him, someone with lower standards, or his he lost...finding that he is not what anyone would have expected him to be?Perrotta has obviously come to some very wise understandings about the world. He sees that lots of people do not make choices, but act like children and go wherever the wind blows. Perrotta also describes those mundane, smaller details of human behavior and interactions with a realism and attention to detail that makes you wonder if he's been spying on you: while you chatted with your mother, when you failed the bar or when you've spent all day at home with the kids, daddy (in this case, mommy) walks in and they forget all about you....I loved some things about LITTLE CHILDREN: (1) partly because Todd (gender and a few other things aside) is living my life, and Perrotta told the story so realistically; (2) because of the surprising way that Perrotta has of putting a thing: you've felt that way before but have never had it expressed so clearly; and (3) because of the way that I was made to feel a connection to each character. Even if their existence in the story was simply to serve as a contrast/foil or to say something that Perrotta wanted to say, none of them were wasted. The ending however, felt incomplete. Maybe it was supposed to leave the reader with an unsatisfied, unfinished feeling, as this entire book seems to be a reminder that life isn't full of perfect fairytale endings. Even so I give LITTLE CHILDREN four stars instead of five because of an ending that felt too easy and a little discordant.Will Really Make You Think.

What made the 1999 film Election, based on Tom Perrotta's novel of the same name, was the way we saw suburban, middle-class characters suffering the disparity between their grand aspirations and their unfulfilled longings as they languished in their miserable marriages, their hellish sense of loneliness, and their personal frustration as they never lived up to whatever excitement, career success, and romance they believed they deserved in their lives. Now comes Perrotta's novel The Little Children, which in many ways is even more ambitious and relevant social commentary than his entertaining novel Election. Like the stories of John Cheever, Perrotta's novel shows that there is no suburban Eden. It is rather a place seething with infantile lusts, narcissism, arrested emotional development, and all kinds of tomfoolery that keep the novel from taking itself too seriously. For all the serious subject matter, this novel departs from Cheever in terms of tone. Whereas Cheever deals with suburban ennui with somberness and subtle irony, Perrotta prefers the comic romp. We see Todd, unhappily married to a wife who dotes on her child at the expense of giving her husband any attention, leaving him sexually starved. We see Sarah, from another marriage, who, failing as a professor of women's studies and working in a Starbuck's, marries for reasons of financial security and convenience and ends up having an affair with Todd whom she meets at the park playground where many adults take their kids to play. Perhaps the most grotesque character who comes close to being a cartoon figure is busy-body Larry, a macho retired cop who, bored with his early retirement, intrudes on the life of a released sex criminal, becoming in many ways more of a nuisance than the pariah who infests the neighborhood. The scenes where Larry pressures the namby-pamby Todd to play hardcore park football with Larry's Marine buddies is hilarious and gives the novel, which is so full of many sobering themes about dysfunctional suburbia, great comic relief. As many have said, The Little Children is about adults who wear a mask of bravado and assuredness to conceal that behind all their middle-class trappings and domestic comforts, they are little more than frightened children who, without a moral compass, have lost their way.

I picked up "Little Children" having read a number of Tom Perrotta's newer books and although the story was pretty decent and moved along quickly, I found that some elements didn't really hold together super well and made the book somewhat jerky to read. The book itself is about a collection of eclectic individuals who live in a typical suburban setting and somehow get together, sleep with each other's spouses, and pretty much ruin their families. Sarah is my mind is the most interesting and character. She is a granola-like feminist who isn't happy with her job or her husband who watches porn all day on his computer. She gets together with Todd who is a stay at home dad known as the Prom King as they meet every day at the pool and then spend more and more time together at home while their kids sleep. The most controversial character is Ronnie who is back from prison after committing acts of pedophilia. The question you end up asking yourself for most of the book is "for how long does someone have to pay for that sort of sin." We learn more about Ronnie as the book leads to its explosive end thanks to a vigilante neighbor of Ronnie's. Again, this was a pretty decent book but it could have been much tighter. I do recommend it for fans of Tom Perrotta as it is very much like his other books.

I watched the film at least a year ago but always feel more loyal to the book. In this case, despite very different endings I'd say they're both worth the time.As a mother of young children and wife there were moments and thoughts and situations that brought a wry smile to my face while reading.I like Sarah, I think we could be friends (if she were real!)I struggled a bit with the American football as I'm not familiar with the terminology but it was written well enough to get me through.Perrotta is a high quality but utterly readable novelist dealing with weighty issues with a deft hand. Humour, tragedy, the whole shebang is in Little Children.

I've now read a few of Tom Perrotta's books. They follow the same path. Very relatable and character driven but light on plot. And Little Children is probably the one that typifies this most. It's about the interactions between the main players and their arcs. Humour is consistent throughout and it has a satisfying ending but not a necessarily happy one.

Very good writing, a good insight into our lives and into literary criticism; there is an interesting discussion on how Flaubert's Madame Bovary is perceived by different people. well worth five stars.

I enjoyed this book immensely. I felt enthralled by all the character's situations. I liked the way the book explores morality and peoples desires and choices. I am saddened to finish this book.

An excellent and well written novel - several parallels across the characters.