Little Children (edit title)

• Rated 2 stars

“The movie was much better.”

• Rated 3 stars

“Really good book with fantastic characters--anyone who has lived in suburbia will find someone they know in them (or secretly relate to someone personally). One of my favorite scenes, so telling of educated-SAHM life, is the very beginning with all the mothers on the playground who can't remember the names of the movies they've seen.

The only thing keeping me from giving this book four stars is the ending. It seemed very rushed and slapped together, like Perrota just didn't know how to end the book. The movie ending was FANTASTIC, though.”

• Rated 4 stars

“This is definitely my favorite Perrotta novel. It fits in with my "chick lit for dudes" theory, but his examination of the bleakness of suburbia is spectacular. The movie abandoned some of the better secondary characters here, which is really Perrotta's strong suit.”

• Rated 5 stars

“LOVED IT TOTALLY RECOMMEND”

• Rated 1 stars

“too many dysfuntional and demented lives in one neighborhood. movie was a tad better, but still disturbing.”

• Rated 4 stars

“Not sure why there had to be the part with the pervert. This book perfectly describes how affairs happen. It's a lesson for everyone.”

• Rated 3 stars

“The characters are interesting. Good story, but a little too dark for my taste.”

• Rated 5 stars

“A disturbingly good read, the characters are well developed and draw you in, forgo the movie starring Kate Winslet, just read the book!”

• Rated 4 stars

“Interesting characters. Makes me want to see the movie now.”

• Rated 5 stars

“Tom Perrotta’s Little Children is a searing look at American suburbia. Deep in the seemingly innocuous children’s playground was to be the beginning of an affair between thirtyish parents who bring their tots to the playground. Meet Sarah Pierce, a lapsed feminist who has become a typical wife in a traditional marriage with her partner Richard, who has become more and more entangled in internet fantasy with Slutty Kay.Meet Todd who is dubbed as the “Prom King”, the stay at home father who has failed the bar exams twice and is married to Kathy, a beautiful maker of documentary films.And then there’s Mary Ann who has a roll in the hay with her husband with clockwork regularity on Tuesday nights at 9 p.m.
On a dare, Sarah was made to ask the phone number of Todd but she did more than that. To shock the moms in the playground she asks Todd to embrace her and they even kissed. Such was the start of their affair.
Interspersed in the seemingly quite neighborhood is the homecoming of a child molester Ronnie McGorvey from prison. Posters and literature about him are distributed by Larry Moon, an ex-cop who shot a teenager by mistake and was relieved from his post and is now in the throes of a divorce.
I liked the part in the book when Sarah Pierce gives her two cents on Madame Bovary’s illicit affairs. Sarah says “It’s not the cheating. It’s the hunger for an alternative. The refusal to accept unhappiness.”
The ending was disturbing. It made me feel like one would be in the sidelines forever while the beautiful people with charmed lives keep on gaining. It’s a sad story. Affairs are something one could get into but seldom morph into something permanently tangible like marriage. Affairs are sexciting, shaggedelic explosions that are a result of the heat of the moment. It’s just lust but it does not last.
There was some kind of closure for Ronnie and his number one enemy, Larry Moon, Mary Anne and Sarah most specially. It begun in the playground and the story ended in the same place. It ended all too soon.
Little Children, to me is aptly entitled. The men and women in the book are but merely children living out their fantasies until they realized with absolute clarity that life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards as Soren Kierkegaard has observed about life.
It’s a good , enthralling read.Tom Perrotta showed an incisive look into the inner workings of the minds and emotions of the characters, infusing life in each one with brutal honesty . But don’t take my word for it. You have to read it yourself.”