actually i expected more from this book. the characters were boring, no real rythm, not even very interesting or funny.

I really enjoyed this book. I read it almost entirely in one evening. I've read other novels about floundering suburbanites, such as "The Ice Storm" or "Rabbit, Run", but what made "Little Children" different is how much effort Tom Perrotta put into really fleshing out the characters and making them seem like real, flawed, funny, sad, interesting people. As the book goes on, even when the characters are behaving in ways that, on the surface, might seem selfish or ridiculous, you find it hard to judge them for it. Although much of the novel is darkly comic, the overriding empathy the author seems to feel for his characters always seems to shine through. I saw this book as less of a satire or critique of suburbia and more of a story about how growing up is a continuous process. The characters in "Little Children", 30ish and up, are still in the process of coming to terms with who they are and the world around them.

I did not like any of the characters in this book. They all need to grow up- I guess that's the point, but it makes it hard for me to enjoy the book when I don't have much empathy for the characters. It drives me crazy that the main character doesn't seem to love her 3 year old daughter. I wanted to smack her (the mother not the daughter).

On the surface, Tom Perrotta's novel "Little Children" is about the affair that begins on the playground between a househusband (Todd) and housewife (Sarah) looking after their respective children while their spouses are off earning the family income. However, Perrotta explores much more than the affairs between the two lovers; he shares with us the homelives of each. He lets us know how these two have reached this point and why they long for something more...why any of us long for something more and how maybe we'll never be totally happy as something will always be out of reach. He also gives us a some insight into Todd's and Sarah's pasts, including how they met their spouses. Sarah's husband also leads an interesting secret life that includes his hidden fetish of Slutty Kay, a wildly sexual girl he meets on the Internet.

Friends and neighbors are introduced, and we get to know their personalities and homelives as well. Last but not least is the story of a new face to the neighborhood, Ronnie, a convicted pedophile, as he comes back home to live with his mother and is "outed" and constantly ridiculed by a committee led by a concerned (and volatile) parent. His characters are very three-dimensional, and it was a pleasure to get to know each and every one of them, whether I liked their personalities or not.

"Little Children" is a literary version between "Desperate Housewives" and the movie "Crash" where many lives and events happen at the same time and occasionally intersect. And, like little children, the adults in this fantastically written novel want immediate gratification and happy times all the time.

A friend of mine had also read the novel, albeit before me. She told me that she didn't care for the novel and was disappointed that there was no resolution at the end. After finishing the novel, I didn't see that. I definitely felt a resolution with all storylines, as well as their futures. Now if only the movie version would be released in cities other than LA, New York, and Chicago, I could feel fulfilled by the whole experience and get to see the characters I grew to know and love over the past couple of weeks.

As I read this book, I kept asking myself if I should be laughing or disgusted/sad/angry at the events and characters in this book. I would have stopped reading if it wasn't for one of the story lines that seemed remotely interesting. You don't get to know the characters very well and a few are introduced late in the book as if the author said "oops, I forgot this person!" It seemed as if this book was written for a Lifetime Movie or maybe Comdey Central.