Reviewing the Mail: Week of October 22, 2022

This week I have one library book - that I actually walked in and picked up off a shelf, like in the Olden Days. Although...I was looking at my online library list earlier in the day, and saw that it was there, so that might be an asterisk.

Tracy Flick Can't Win is the new novel from Tom Perrotta, that bestselling chronicler of  lives lived in the modern suburbs. (That sounds dismissive, but it's where I live, and may be where you do, too.) It's the sequel to Election, his second novel, as you might guess from the title. The go-getter from Election is now middle-aged - yes, it's shocking to all of us when we realize it - and apparently has not conquered the entire world as she thought she would.

I liked Election the book and (which is more famous) Election the movie, but ingested both of them well before this blog, so I have no record of doing so. And I've been reading Perrotta - though I still haven't managed to read his Rapture novel, for Rapture-novel reasons - with mostly pleasure and maybe too little distance for about thirty years now. (See my posts on Mrs. Fletcher and The Abstinence Teacher.) So I will read this one quickly, and probably have complicated thought about it, which is good for a guy blogging about books.