Election
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Leftovers and Tracy Flick Can't Win comes a darkly hilarious novel about a high school election that brings out the worst in everyone—the basis for the film starring Reese Witherspoon!
Tracy Flick wants to be President of Winwood High. She’s one of those ambitious girls who finds time to do it all: edit the yearbook, star in the musical, sleep with her English teacher. But another teacher, staunch idealist Jim McAllister, aka “Mr. M.,” thinks the students deserve better. So he persuades Paul Warren—a well-liked, good-hearted jock—to throw in his hat. But that puts Paul’s sister Tammy in a snit. So she runs too, on an apathy platform, before starting a real campaign...to get herself kicked out of school.
The idea was to educate the students at this suburban New Jersey school in the democratic process and the American way. But with all the sex scandals, smear campaigns, and behind-the-scenes power brokers at Winwood High, it doesn’t look as if they need any lessons....
Tracy Flick wants to be President of Winwood High. She’s one of those ambitious girls who finds time to do it all: edit the yearbook, star in the musical, sleep with her English teacher. But another teacher, staunch idealist Jim McAllister, aka “Mr. M.,” thinks the students deserve better. So he persuades Paul Warren—a well-liked, good-hearted jock—to throw in his hat. But that puts Paul’s sister Tammy in a snit. So she runs too, on an apathy platform, before starting a real campaign...to get herself kicked out of school.
The idea was to educate the students at this suburban New Jersey school in the democratic process and the American way. But with all the sex scandals, smear campaigns, and behind-the-scenes power brokers at Winwood High, it doesn’t look as if they need any lessons....
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Community Reviews
Two quick things first:
1. I watched the movie based on this book about sixteen years ago. I watched it on a tiny television I had in my kitchen and was doing kitchen things (dishes, cooking, who knows?) while it played. So I was a little distracted then and had only the vaguest of recollections regarding the storyline when I started reading the book. I will definitely be revisiting the movie in the near future now that I've read the book.
2. This was my first book by Tom Perrotta. I have already looked up all of his other books and plan to buy them in one big sweep if that gives you any hint as to how I felt about this.
This is set in 1992, which hit just right for me; the bulk of my childhood took place in the 90s. My only complaint about this book was that I wanted more of it. But then again maybe it would have ruined it to have changed the length. I just found the entire cast of characters to be interesting and wouldn't have been opposed to getting more of each of them. Beyond the characters, I loved the writing and the tone and the dark humor that had me chuckling more than once.
On the surface this is a book about an ambitious girl who wants to be class president and a teacher who - for reasons - doesn't want her to achieve that goal and convinces another student to run. He also gets his paws into the election. And another student also runs for class president. Well sort of. So this sounds like a slightly absurd but still relatively normal and not really all that eventful type of story. But this book offers more than the story on the surface.
What I loved (aside from all the things I mentioned above) is that there is also this honesty about teenagers and high school (its importance or maybe really its lack of importance during and after it). There is also an honesty about (some) adults, the type of honesty that some of the naysayers seem to have a hard time digesting. But here's the reality. There are men out there who are pigs about women, including women who are not yet actual women but are instead still children even if they have developed butts and boobs. There are spouses that cheat. There are spouses that stay in the relationship after their spouses cheat. There are adults who do bad things or have bad thoughts, and life does not always "punish" them accordingly. Adulthood can be messy and gross and demeaning. It can be wonderful things as well, but let's not fool ourselves that it can't be messy and gross and demeaning, too. I like that this is really exposed here - often in a darkly humorous way. I know that some people would want to see Mr. M get flogged for his thoughts and actions, but I'd say someone who loves teaching having to sell cars instead is pretty close (and much more comedic). Let's not forget that he also faces a good amount of humiliation and rejection (in more ways than one).
I'm just sort of rambling at this point, so I'll wrap this up.
I would probably put this at 4ish stars, BUT I feel it deserves a higher overall rating. AND reading this made me really love Perrotta's writing style and made me want to seek out all his other books, so with that in mind, I'm giving it the full 5 Stars.
1. I watched the movie based on this book about sixteen years ago. I watched it on a tiny television I had in my kitchen and was doing kitchen things (dishes, cooking, who knows?) while it played. So I was a little distracted then and had only the vaguest of recollections regarding the storyline when I started reading the book. I will definitely be revisiting the movie in the near future now that I've read the book.
2. This was my first book by Tom Perrotta. I have already looked up all of his other books and plan to buy them in one big sweep if that gives you any hint as to how I felt about this.
This is set in 1992, which hit just right for me; the bulk of my childhood took place in the 90s. My only complaint about this book was that I wanted more of it. But then again maybe it would have ruined it to have changed the length. I just found the entire cast of characters to be interesting and wouldn't have been opposed to getting more of each of them. Beyond the characters, I loved the writing and the tone and the dark humor that had me chuckling more than once.
On the surface this is a book about an ambitious girl who wants to be class president and a teacher who - for reasons - doesn't want her to achieve that goal and convinces another student to run. He also gets his paws into the election. And another student also runs for class president. Well sort of. So this sounds like a slightly absurd but still relatively normal and not really all that eventful type of story. But this book offers more than the story on the surface.
What I loved (aside from all the things I mentioned above) is that there is also this honesty about teenagers and high school (its importance or maybe really its lack of importance during and after it). There is also an honesty about (some) adults, the type of honesty that some of the naysayers seem to have a hard time digesting. But here's the reality. There are men out there who are pigs about women, including women who are not yet actual women but are instead still children even if they have developed butts and boobs. There are spouses that cheat. There are spouses that stay in the relationship after their spouses cheat. There are adults who do bad things or have bad thoughts, and life does not always "punish" them accordingly. Adulthood can be messy and gross and demeaning. It can be wonderful things as well, but let's not fool ourselves that it can't be messy and gross and demeaning, too. I like that this is really exposed here - often in a darkly humorous way. I know that some people would want to see Mr. M get flogged for his thoughts and actions, but I'd say someone who loves teaching having to sell cars instead is pretty close (and much more comedic). Let's not forget that he also faces a good amount of humiliation and rejection (in more ways than one).
I'm just sort of rambling at this point, so I'll wrap this up.
I would probably put this at 4ish stars, BUT I feel it deserves a higher overall rating. AND reading this made me really love Perrotta's writing style and made me want to seek out all his other books, so with that in mind, I'm giving it the full 5 Stars.
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