The Wishbones
TOM PERROTTA
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56 reviews (1997) (624p)Visit this book's Amazon.com page >>
| Book Description |
| Everything was going pretty well for Dave Raymond, a thirty-one-year-old wedding musician. He still lived with his parents (but came and went as he pleased)--and though his job wasn't exactly the big time, it paid okay and gave him plenty of free time to hang out with the other Wishbones, downing beers and quizzing each other on rock and roll trivia. Yeah, life wasn't perfect, but it wasn't bad at all. Then he had to blow it all by proposing to his girlfriend... * A New York Times Notable Book of the Year * Terrific reviews from Mademoiselle, Time Out New York, Robert Olen Butler, Publishers Weekly, and others "Readers will [be] hooting for an encore."--New York Times Book Review |
| Amazon.com Review |
| Tom Perrotta's first novel, The Wishbones, is all about that much-maligned class of 30-ish men who still live at home with their parents, guys who make furtive love to their girlfriends--if they have them at all--in the basement rec room or the back seat of a car. But Dave Raymond, the protagonist of The Wishbones, doesn't waste his time on Star Trek reruns or computer games; he spends his weekends playing in a wedding band called The Wishbones, using the rapidly receding dream of rock stardom as an excuse to put off growing up. The sudden death of a fellow musician sends Dave into something of a tailspin, however, and in a moment of weakness, he proposes to his longtime girlfriend, Julie. The engagement has hardly been announced when Dave meets Gretchen, a bridesmaid at one of the weddings at which The Wishbones play, and before long he's having serious doubts about his own marital plans. Everybody knows someone like Dave, but a real-life puer aeternus is rarely as entertaining as Perrotta's fictional one. Perrotta wisely surrounds his sad-sack protagonist with an array of entertaining supporting characters, from a joint-smoking priest to one of Dave's band-mates whose life work is a musical based on Kennedy's assassination. By the time The Wishbones winds down to its well-deserved end, readers will be wishing for a second novel from Tom Perrotta soon. |
| Other Award Winning Books by Tom Perrotta |
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868 reviews (2011) (p)
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| Tom Perrotta Award Stats |
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| *Major Prize = Pulitzer Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, National Book Award, Man Booker Prize, and PEN/Faulkner Award |
