Tom Perrotta and The Wishbones
Categories: Staff Picks , Fiction
Little Children, which is based on Tom Perrrotta’s novel by the same name, has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture. This pleases me enormously—although I haven’t seen the movie yet, I thought Perrotta’s novel was terrific. (I wasn’t alone either. The Main Library’s Fiction Department picked Little Children as one of their favorite novels of 2004, describing it as “a smart, funny novel about marriage, domestic life, and unfulfilled dreams in suburbia.”)I’ve been a fan of Perrotta’s work for a long time. Since 1997, to be specific, when The Wishbones, his first novel was published.
The hero of this charming coming-of-age novel is Dave (a.k.a. “Daverino”) Raymond. Dave’s life is a fairly uncomplicated one: although he’s 31, he still lives with his parents in their suburban New Jersey home. He divides his time between working as a freelance driver for a courier service, playing in a wedding band with some of his friends, and hanging out with Julie, the long-suffering girlfriend he’s been dating for fifteen years. Not the most exciting existence, but all in all, Dave is pretty content. Then, in a moment of weakness, he stuns himself, and everyone he knows, by proposing to Julie. Is he really ready to take this step? On second thought, maybe not, but it’s too late--the wedding plans are in full swing. And then Dave falls for Gretchen, a glum but vaguely sexy poet who lives in Brooklyn. Now Dave is really confused. Has the time come for him to chuck his predictable, quiet life in the New Jersey suburbs with Julie and embrace the glittering lights of New York City?
I really enjoyed this book. With a light but sure touch, Perrotta deftly chronicled Dave’s fumbling efforts to come to grips with the responsibilities of adulthood and marriage. It will remind many readers of High Fidelity (another favorite of mine but that’s a story for another day). I picked The Wishbones up again the other night to see if stood the test of time. It passed with flying colors—once I started reading it again, I couldn’t put it down.
