Order
Meet Todd, the handsome stay-at-home dad dubbed “The Prom King” by the moms at the playground, and his wife, Kathy, a documentary filmmaker envious of the connection Todd has forged with their toddler son. And there’s Sarah, a lapsed feminist surprised to find she’s become a typical wife in a traditional marriage, and her husband, Richard, who is becoming more and more involved with an internet fantasy life than with his own wife and child. And then there’s Mary Ann, who has life all figured out, down to a scheduled roll in the hay with her husband every Tuesday at nine P.M.
They all raise their kids in the kind of quiet suburb where nothing ever seems to happen—until one eventful summer, when a convicted child molester moves back to town, and two parents begin an affair that goes further than either of them could ever have imagined.
Now a major motion picture.
Select Reviews
“Extraordinary…at once suspenseful, ruefully funny, and ultimately generous. What is Tom Perrotta but an American Chekhov, whose characters even at their most ridiculous seem blessed and ennobled by a luminous human aura?” — Will Blythe, New York Times Book Review [Read the full review]
“Suburban comedies don’t come any sharper.” — People
“A virtuoso set of overlapping character studies…a greatly auspicious and instructive encounter with dread world of maturity.” — Washington Post
Additional Reviews
Janet Maslin, New York Times
More reviews from ReviewsofBooks.com
Media
Interview with NPR’s Terry Gross on Fresh Air (April 12, 2004)