By Kristin Erhard

The regressive lives of bored adults living in cookie-cutter, suburban America is not a typically captivating storyline in a bestseller book. But then again, Tom Perottaís novel ìLittle Childrenî (St.Martinís, 355 pages, $13.95) is not the average portrayal of suburbia either

†ìLittle Childrenî is a chronicle more of the scandalously advertuous lives of immature adults than of the banality of childrearing in Middle America. This novel is an encounter with the dreaded world of maturity, following the lives of adults who never really grew up, indulging in their own sexual fantasies and selfishness while abandoning marital and familial responsibility.

The characters in ìLittle Childrenî are living one version of the American Dream in a quiet suburb outside Boston. The parents, young and successful with healthy children, live enviable lives ó yet they are unsatisfied. In this satirical novel, the adults regress into childlike behavior in an attempt to escape their ìpainfully ordinary lives.î

Imagine the drama of high school still alive in the mentalities of characters who long ago traded in their jerseys for wedding rings and nights of partying for putting their children to bed early. Each adult character represents a high-school persona: the jock, the popular girl, the scholarly feminist and the asocial nerd who heeds endless harassment.

What makes this fiction not so fictitious is the intriguing cast of characters in their mid-thirties. I use the word ìcastî instead of ìsetî because from start to finish, chapter to chapter, ìLittle Childrenî is full of interpersonal drama typical of any successful television show or movie.

The story opens on a playground with a pack of suburban mothers watching their children play while engaging in superficial conversation. Sarah, a once-empowered college feminist, listens on with disdain for the banality of these womenís routines and overweening interest in their pre-school-aged children.

Sarah sarcastically and consolingly tells herself, ìIím a researcher studying the behavior of boring suburban women. I am not a boring suburban woman myself.î Todd, a handsome, stay-at-home father, appears on the playground with his toddler son just in time to break the monotony of Sarahís playground-and-snack-time maternal life. Dubbed the ìProm Kingî by the other mothers who frequent the neighborhood playground, Todd seems oblivious to his local fame and numb to the monotony of child-rearing ó he shows up at just the right time to spice up Sarahís life.

After discovering her older husbandís secret obsession with an Internet porn star, Sarah has no qualms about partaking in and even soliciting an illicit summer fling with† the playground Prom King. Both escape the bread-and-butter routine of their suburban lives in a full-blown affair characteristic of a daytime soap opera.

The private drama of each household is subverted when Ronnie McGorvey, an alleged child-molester, moves into the neighborhood over the objections and anxiety of the parents. Ronnie serves as the public, tabloid-esque distraction from the adulterous scandals and Internet perversions of the parentsí private lives.

The story is woven together by the desperation of seemingly disparate characters. The traditional notion of family in suburban America is at stake throught the book. The marital problems, infidelity and deviant behavior of each character keep the reader turning pages to see how the plot not only strings itself along but ties all the characters and their idiosyncracies together at the end.

It comes as no wonder that author Tom Perrotaís last book ìElectionî is now a Hollywood film. With each chapter in ìLittle Childrenî a cliff-hanger and a thoughtfully crafted storyline overall, it would not surprise me to see this book on the big screen within the next year.

Perrotta has an extraodinary ability to understand and reveal insecurities and critique their effects on social behavior. Writing from both male and female perspectives, he lends a fresh take on old news: Even suburbia is not perfect.

Sure, itís been done before, but the honest and humorous approach to such a commonplace subject makes ìLittle Childrenî an engaging read.

Even when the adult protagonists behave immaturely, the reader cannot help but sympathize with them because they have sacrificed so much for their children. The parents have found themselves tied down by the irreversibility of their actions.

Consequently, the once-idyllic image of each family in their prefabricated home morphs into something that more closely resembles a penitentiary in the minds of these adventure-starved parents.

ìLittle Childrenî lets it be known that sometimes adults may not be real ìgrown-ups,î making even the simple title fodder for re-examination.
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Kristin Erhard is a recent graduate of UNC Asheville.