Tom Perrotta has a bit of James Brown in him. Brown was known as the “hardest working man in show business” and Perrotta might make a similar claim in the fiction department. His fingers must rarely stray from the keyboard, except when he strolls around Dickens-like to observe humanity and its frailties with a sharp eye and a great sense of humor. Perrotta hits bookstores — and bestseller lists, no doubt — once again this summer with the story of Mrs. Fletcher, a 46-year-old woman facing a new life as her only child departs for college. The new life, since Perrotta always has his finger on the cultural pulse as well as keyboard, comes courtesy of sexy texts and mystery. (What Malamud might have made of this new world! His A New Life could be a model here.)
Perrotta is the author of more than a dozen books, all of which seem to explore and capture the cultural moment while also being grounded in timeless themes of love, sex, loneliness, friendship and money. And there’s a bonus with any Perrotta book: if you’re not in a reading mood, just wait. Somebody will make a movie, at TV show or a miniseries based on it. Perrotta is a golden name in Hollywood. See Little Children, Election, The Leftovers, etc.
[Suggestion: Read a great interview with Perrotta at Harvard, his alma mater]
