Little Children Book

This was like if Richard Yates or Raymond Carver had written a suburban psychological drama bordering on chick-lit: but with added intelligence, covered with a dusting of dark satire.

Little Children is primarily about lackluster marriages, adultery, and child-raising in typical American upper and middle class suburbia. Oh, and there is a sex offender in here too.
We have Sarah, absent-minded mother of Lucy, who is member of a reading group, and the mommy tribe that meet at the local playground - though she kind of despises them. Herself and husband Richard haven't been intimate for months, as he'd rather be sat in his office sniffing a pair of dirty panties that he ordered through the post from Slutty Kay - his online infatuation.
There is Todd: nicknamed the Prom King by local women, husband of Kathy, who looks after their 3-year-old son during the day whilst Kathy works. And it's at the park that he first meets Sarah, who is just waiting for a decent, kind, good looking man to put some excitement back into her life, because she isn't going to get it from Richard!
Sarah begins to imagine a life with Todd, a former campus hunk and high school football hero who has always had his pick of the women. To his surprise though: despite Kathy being a stunner, Todd finds himself equally drawn to the plain looking Sarah. She diverts his attention from his desultory efforts to study for the bar exam he has already failed twice.

An affair was always on the table. Or the washing machine as it turned out.

And with added pressure from his wife, who is a documentary filmmaker, she thinks it's about time he was the one bringing home the biggest pay packet - so she can finally play mommy.
The view here of families in the eyes of Perrotta's men and women, are those of contemptible alliances, of boredom, and of disappointment. Every spouse feels the need to escape - though it usually ends up as some sort of new domestic arrangement that proves futile in their anguished hopes of starting afresh.
So now we come to Ronald James McGorvey, who returns to the neighbourhood after a three-year stint in prison for having exposed himself to a girl.
Now, you might think Perrotta treats this guy with total contempt - but he doesn't.
From the neighbours and mothers in the book yes, but not from the writer.
All main characters receive Perrotta's wry affection, and McGorvey gets it too. There are some really tender moments in the book, including moments between Ronnie and his elderly mother, who he moves back in with after prison. She loves her son, and sees him as someone who is suffering an illness, rather than believing he is an evil monster, and tries to help him as best she can. And as much as I tried to fight it, it was difficult not to have sympathy for him, and her, in the end.

What I liked a lot about this novel is that Perrotta humanizes without sentimentalizing, and pulls off being quite cold-blooded at times, but yet he is so full of warm feelings for his main characters.
Through the linked events that occur, Perrotta delivers a really satisfying ending to his narrative, which is crowned by a deeply touching and ironic scene, which takes place at the same playground where Sarah first felt attracted to the dashing Prom King.

The dialogue here is really astute, and so genuine depending on the situation each character finds themselves in, and with some really good interior monologues, these characters feel so real they could quite easily just be living down the road. Everything seemed to move along at a jolly old pace too, which was a surprise to me, so I felt compelled to just get on and finish the thing in as little amount of time as possible. Another reason not to drag it out is that I knew what was coming anyway, having seen the 2006 movie a few times. I'd put movie: which really impressed me, at least on a par with the novel.