Blog intro bit: This is a blog where I am going to write about what I read. It's a summer project. Maybe when winter comes we can engage serious questions about the role of the critic and blogosphere and blah blah blah.

Tom Perrotta's Little Children.

A friend described the book to me as a slightly lighter version of the movie which was, according to him, "like someone was punching you in your cock over and over again." I have not seen the movie, because I haven't been itching to get punched in my metaphorical wang of late.

But, apparently, I still wanted to be mildly depressed. And that's what Little Children does so well: it mildly depresses you at the speed of a beach read. I started it at ten in the morning. At six at night, only eight mildly depressed hours later, including breaks to ride the train and eat a sandwich, I was done. Tom Perrotta has a gift for conveying character archetypes through the contemporary medium with which we judge each other: clothes, cars, collegiate extra-curriculars. As a result, you feel like you know these people and simultaneously feel completely estranged from them. It's Mary-Anne - the uptight neighborhood busybody, the former perfect type-A sorority woman, and without a single scrap of empaty. Even the female protagonist, Sarah (and let me tell you, it is creepy to read a novel where the protagonist shares your first name*) is quite precisely described as a woman launched into her femminine consciousness by the virtue of women's studies classes. She marries because she doesn't know what else to do with her life and is destined to live at odds with whatever true version of herself exists under the surface. Perrotta tells you all this stuff - but you just don't see it. Each character is carefully assembled to fulfill their narrative function, which makes them, in many ways, just lighter, more comedic and contemporary versions of the classic naturalistic protagonists. It's Madame Bovary with Cheerios - and to the credit of the author, quite consciously so.

The version of the book I read came with book club questions, which I found very funny since there was a book club about Madame Bovary in the book. What is that called? When a thing is in a thing? I used to know this word. Anyway, here are some of my book club questions for you.

1. Does eating a roast beef sandwich help or hurt your understanding of Todd and Sarah's relationship?
2. How does your current level of self-pity affect your attitude toward the characters in the book? Inverse? Direct?
3. Why is there a fish on the front of the book?

So, there you go, blog. We're up and running!

*Which, oddly enough, even with the popularity of my name, is rare. This book....Sarah Plain and Tall (not a fan of that title)....Sarah Bishop....