Little Children

Lest I be accused of focusing too much on non-fiction, let me note a fiction review that has peaked (piqued?) my interest. Tom Perrotta’s Little Children has been in the news lately because of a legal battle over the cover art. Although he doesn’t mention the cover art issue, David Klinghoffer reviews Perrotta’s latest in the current issue of National Review [sub. req.]. Klinghoffer is impressed:

Although nothing much happens in Perrotta’s Little Children, which unfolds in a fictional Boston-area suburb called Bellington, this is a novel whose last page I was sad to reach. A brilliant comic, a deeply sympathetic and dead-on-accurate observer of human vulnerabilities, Perrotta is also the author of a novel that was turned into a 1999 high-school movie, one of the best in that lofty genre, Election . . . This is not an anti-suburb novel. It’s simply about a kind of human foible, common in Boston no less than in Bellington, that seems to find its most apt, its most poetic, expression in suburban existence. Storytelling, fooling yourself, may be done in the city or country, but only the suburb was specially designed for it. The insight is conveyed succinctly in this beautiful and wise little book.

Looks like another book needs to be added to the reading pile . . .

Kevin Holtsberry
I work in communications and public affairs. I try to squeeze in as much reading as I can while still spending time with my wife and two kids (and cheering on the Pittsburgh Steelers and Michigan Wolverines during football season).