Election (Hardcover)

by Tom Perotta (Author) "ALL I EVER WANTED to do was teach..." (more)
Key Phrases: Tom Perrotta, Winwood High, Immaculate Mary (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Tom Perrotta is a remarkably astute observer and writer of the adolescent experience. His Bad Haircut: Stories of the Seventies is a delightful collection of coming-of-age stories, which give insight into the joys and agonies of adolescence. In Perrotta's first full-length novel The Wishbones, a 31-year-old musician can't quite cope with the responsibilities of adulthood and instead lives an extended adolescence. Perrotta's much-anticipated second novel Election again successfully ventures into the adolescent psyche.

The book is set in a New Jersey high school amidst a hotbed of political activity: students are voting for their school president. Perrotta's cast of characters are exaggerated but convincing. They convey adolescence as it often is--sometimes painful and frequently awkward. Tracy is the popular girl, smart and pretty, but she isn't quite as perfect as her classmates assume. A sordid affair with a teacher lurks in the shadows. Paul is the jovial football jock, but his parent's divorce has left him hurt and vulnerable. Then there is Paul's younger and geekier sister Tammy, the tormented underdog struggling with her sexuality. Plot develops through a series of mini-chapters, narrated by the main protagonists. There are also frequent interjections from Mr. M, the all-around good teacher every kid loves--the kind of teacher Hollywood loves to enshrine in sentimental flicks. A genuine crescendo of excitement and anticipation consumes the reader, as we eagerly await who has won the election. This is a novel of teenagers on the brink of adulthood, and is probably best appreciated by grownups with enough perspective on their own adolescent experiences to be able to take the bitter with the sweet.

From Publishers Weekly
A far cry from Sweet Valley High, this wry, engaging story of a 1992 high-school election in a New Jersey town "a couple of exits" away from Glen Ridge is observant and sly, if less amusing than the battles over pop-musical taste in Perrotta's quirkily humorous first novel, The Wishbones. The candidates for school presidency of Winwood High are an uninspiring bunch campaigning for what almost everybody knows is an empty office. Ambitious Tracy Flick is a hot bundle of raw political ambition and a bad reputation, who campaigns with cupcakes against Paul Warren, a jock with a pretty face and high PSAT scores who is urged to run by his history teacher (and sometime narrator) Jim McAllister. Paul's nihilistic sister Tammy (who enters the race in a despairing rage because she's in love with Paul's girlfriend) is the single fresh and original character here?and she gets herself suspended before Election Day. The results are blessedly far from feel-good, and Perrotta casts a wonderfully cool eye on his ostensible protagonist, "Mr. M.," even if the hints of true political satire remain just that, tantalizing hints. Despite six alternating narrators, this is a simple, spare story?designed, perhaps, with moviegoers in mind as well as readers. (Mar.) FYI: A movie version already is in production with MTV Films/Paramount, featuring Matthew Broderick as McAllister.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 200 pages
• Publisher: Putnam Adult (March 9, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399143661
• ISBN-13: 978-0399143663
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 4.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (69 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #816,580 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful read....If You Loved the Movie........, August 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Election (Paperback)

I have to admit, I saw the movie first. At the suggestion of this page I also read "Bad Haircut" before reading "Election". "Bad Haircut" was good, but I think I would have enjoyed it more if I was a guy.

Anyway, the book fills in a blank spots that abound in the movie. It incorporates current events that occurred around the time the book was written. The reactions of the characters to this and each other makes them three-dimensional. You feel like they could've gone to your school. While the film focused mostly on the character of Mr. M, the lovable civics teacher, the book offers more monologues from more characters. Tracy Flick is given more of a chance to explain herself and is viewed less as a villain, and more as a normal person.

If I haven't sold you yet, read the book for this one reason: IT HAS A BETTER ENDING!!!!!

(Theres a reason why Tom Perotta teaches writing at Harvard!!!!!)

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Tracy-gate, February 26, 2001

By	M. Allen Greenbaum (California) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Election (Paperback)

This is an entertaining light book that could have been better. The problem? The book does not adequately explain the motives of the high school teacher who tries to steal an election from overachiever Tracy Flick. (The book is set in Tom Perrotta's favored region of New Jersey.) The movie adaptation (with Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon) portrays more fully developed characters, allowing one to feel and believe their emotions. However, the book is better than the movie in some respects. Paul Warren, Tracy's main electoral rival, is much more perceptive, and--well--smarter, than the one-dimensional nick jock in the movie. His first-person narration is closest to the author's point of view, and it's a very effective portrayal. Tracy Flick comes off as more sympathetic, although a little more self-aware too.

Paul and Tracy represent high school archetypes; Paul's sister, outsider Tammy (so vividly portrayed in the film) is not as bouyant here and her relationships not highlighted as well. Still, the rapid switches between different first person accounts of chronologically overlapping scenes make this a Rashomen-lite narrative that is fast, light, and often funny.

The main problem is "Mr. M.," the high school teacher who attempts to rig the election against Tracy. We don't see the burn out, the conflicts between idealism and cynicism, and, especially, the self-loathing that Broderick (and the screenplay) brought to the film. Because of this somewhat superficial treatment, his behavior is never provided the context or motivation to fully realize the tragi-comical themes underlying the humor and irony so effectively portrayed in the film. Still, a quick fun read.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars High School Presidential, June 29, 2002

By	Mike Stone (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Election (Paperback)

The back cover of this edition of "Election" makes the following claims: Tracy Flick, prospective President of Winwood High, is the kind of girl who "edits the yearbook [and] star[s] in the musical"; Paul Warren, likable jock, is so dim he's described as "not sure what's going on"; and the election at the high school is fraught with "sex scandals, smear campaigns, and behind-the-scene power brokers". I mention this, because, curiously, none of these things are found in the book. Oh sure, they could be. Maybe in the in-between scenes, the one that author Tom Perrotta doesn't actually write, but that's reading a little too much into the book's subtext. Either that, or an overworked copywriter never read the book, but rented the movie instead.

This is one of those rare occasions where the movie is more fleshed-out than the book. At a scant 200 pages (it can't be more than 40,000 words long; the slowest of readers could polish it off in a couple of hours), I found myself waiting for favourite scenes from the movie to pop up in prose form. Can you believe that Mr. McAllister doesn't even get stung by a bee in the book? For shame! I know, I know, you can't blame Perrotta for any of this; he wrote the book he wrote and he can't change it now for an audience familiar with the story in another medium. They might be disappointed by the omissions, but I wasn't.

While the book rarely gives more than a preliminary expository sketch of its characters, Perrotta is smart enough to allow self-definition through their actions and their speech. Which any good book should be doing anyway. Listen to the way these kids talk. Paul describes his girlfriend Lisa as: "sarcastic-looking." It's a phrase that means nothing, but somehow I can picture her. A better example is this bit from Tracy, describing a torrid affair with a teacher: "We fooled around in the darkroom, the handicapped elevator (this was after school, when the wheelchair kids had gone home), and backstage, behind the curtain." This is the essence of Tracy's character: she's blunt, politically incorrect (ironic for someone running for class president), and unabashedly cold. Perrotta, in a style that stays away from overly purple prose, nails the language of the age perfectly. I suspect that Perrotta knew this was his greatest strength, for the book is told in a series of vignettes, each from a different character's point of view. The effect is "Rashomon"-like, as we get alternating viewpoints on situations and character that allows us to question just who is telling the whole truth.

In a pivotal scene, an overzealous campaign manager defines the 'base' voters of each candidate. Paul's support will come from the "jocks, cheerleaders, and wannabes." Tracy can count on "the AP crowd, [and] maybe the band." Tammy Warren, Paul's younger sister and bona fide alternative candidate, will garner most of her votes from "the burnouts and the benchwarmers and the kids who feel left out." Not only does this scene neatly define the election subplot, but also it quickly categorizes what it means to be a high school student: you're athletic and popular, smart and respected, or apathetic and unsympathetic. It's a pretty bleak school view that Perrotta lays out. For those of us who remember high school vividly, though, it can't be more accurate.

Perrotta's accurate eye is not only trained on the students, but it gets a good look at the teachers too. Jim McAllister, a.k.a. Mr. M., is our conduit into this little-seen world. He's a perfect example of the adage, "those who can, do; those who can't, teach." Although that's unfair, for Mr. M is too satisfied to see if he can 'do'. One moment of anguish has him detailing a dream of his perfect career, only to admit that he'd "done nothing to implement [those dreams]." In many ways, Mr. M reads like a typically content but not happy character. But in other ways, he's rather odd. Over his decade at the school he's built himself a prudent reputation, while simultaneously building a solid marriage. But he dallies from his wife and career in one destructive week, and it changes him from being a respected teacher to a man who would reflexively muse that "it's awful to admit, but I felt a powerful sense of relief every time I turned on the TV and saw buildings going up in flames, and that poor man being dragged out of his truck."

This last bit, an oblique reference to Los Angeles in the wake of the Rodney King verdict, also highlights the book's insistence on being anchored in a specific time period. The L.A. Riots, the Thomas/Hill hearings, and the impending election of Governor Clinton into the White House all form an early nineties backdrop that seems to be commenting directly on the events occurring at Winwood High. "The only difference was that Bill and Clarence lied and I told the truth," laments Mr. M., in one of the book's most poignant lines. The time and place are captured neatly, and relevantly.

"Election" is not a perfect slice-of-life. It's too short to be considered great, and there are some clunky plot-devices that I didn't buy. But it's still more than just a trifle. If you'd told me some prodigy teenager had handed this work in for a creative writing assignment, I'd believe you. For the accuracy and flavour of the dialogue, the complex yet simply believable characters, and the credible picture of high school it draws.