I'm struggling a bit with "Little Children". It is not a bad book but it is just not the insightful satire of suburbia that the blurbs promised. Last night, I read a paragraph that really bugged me. The passage is the voice of Todd, the former college quarterback and law school graduate who cannot pass the bar exam. He is now a stay at home dad and (I am not giving away anything here) is having an affair with Sarah the sometimes bisexual feminist at home mother with the almost PHD (she never did complete her thesis). [As evidence of this book's lack of reality, they are able to have major shag-fests every day during the long hours their toddlers nap (said toddlers simply curl up together in a strange bed without fussing - uh huh). The rest of the time is spent talking and sunning by the side of the pool - no yelling, screaming, splashing, near drownings or pool fouling to contend with here folks]. Todd has decided to skip writing the bar for the third time to spend the weekend with Sarah and Sarah has offered to help him study should he wish to take the exam in the future:
He was touched by the offer, impractical as it was, but he knew he was finished with the bar exam. He was never going to be a lawyer. He'd told Sarah he didn't know what had gone wrong but that wasn't precisely true. He knew, he'd just never been able to put it into words. Something had happened to him over the past couple of years, something to do with being home with Aaron, sinking into the rhythm of a kid's day. The little tasks, the small pleasures. The repetition that goes beyond boredom and becomes a kind of peace. You do it long enough, and the adult world starts to drift away. You can't catch up, not even if you try.
"Mind if I suck your breast?" he asked.
Now this drives me nuts. Perotta has been smart enough to throw in the breast reference to illustrate that this is in fact a satirical work but there is an ugly undertone here that I am not sure that will be corrected (for the record I also found the love/hate teacher student relationship in Election to be troubling even though that was satire with a capital "S"). I'm not sure with Perotta is trying to do here by raising the sterotypical notion that once "baby-brain" sets in, it is hard to ever catch up with the adult world (man, I hope I never need to get a job with this guy on the hiring committee!). He certainly does not seem to be challenging this notion as the characters seem to grow more useless with each passing hour.
Maybe I can't get past the repetition becoming a kind of peace part.
Or maybe I'm just in a bad mood. If anyone out there has read it and had a different take (as I say, I still have to finish the novel) - please email me at tomama@tomama.com
