Perrota -More fiction

The Abstinence Teacher - Tom Perrotta - Books - Review - New York Times

Readers are most aware of his books that became hit movies — the black comedy “Election,” about a high school teacher who coaxes a shy jock to run for school president against a sexually predatory alpha girl; and the wistful romance “Little Children,” about a lonely man and woman, both married to others, both parents of toddlers, who slip into a love affair. But Perrotta’s unmassaged realism runs through all of his writing — from “Bad Haircut: Stories of the Seventies,” a coming-of-age collection so alive in detail that you can practically touch the tube socks and pastel tuxes; to his first novel, “The Wishbones,” about a small-time rocker with wedding jitters; to “Joe College,” a novel about a working-class kid from Jersey who reinvents himself at Yale, callously breaking ties with his girlfriend back home. Perrotta is a master of the lump-in-the-throat reversal, as in his story “Snowman,” when a pack of tough kids smash a giant snowman to punish an “enemy,” then realize, “wild with remorse,” that it was made for their target’s congenitally impaired kid brother. Usually, when you ask yourself, “What would a Perrotta character do?” you know the answer: he’d do the familiar, guiltily compromised, self-interested thing that any normal guy would do ... and you understand him, even if you don’t applaud him.