Tracy Flick Can't Win
Tom Perrotta
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Tracy Flick Can't Win
Tom Perrotta
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
... even more piercing than its predecessor.
Perrotta joins the ranks of the revisionists. The new book is harsher than the earlier one, reflecting the uglier tenor of our times, as well as, I suspect, Perrotta’s desire to clear up any possible confusion about whose side he’s on. You will not close this book commiserating with the likes of Mr. M. Nor will you wonder whether you missed the nuances. Tracy Flick Can’t Win is frankly didactic. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Satire has always had an admonitory function, and besides, some people are so obnoxious that a writer has to slow-walk the reader through their awfulness. Plus, Perrotta has what it takes to revisit the past without being predictable.
... darkly comic.
... ruminative.
Tracy Flick Can’t Win finds the titular Flick still at Green Meadow but now looking to become principal of her former high school. One of a small pool of candidates, the conceit may seem like a retread of Election but instead becomes akin to a convincingly rendered meta-autopsy of Perrotta’s first full-length plot.
Returning to the hits for a sequel isn’t typically a good idea in literature.
It’s so disappointing to find Tracy Flick, in Tracy Flick Can’t Win, stuck as the assistant principal in a suburban New Jersey high school.
Perrotta is one of the most readable novelists we have.
What does it mean to be special? What is the nature of success, of failure? Election was lightly interested in these topics, but Tracy Flick Can’t Win pores over them like an honors student before midterms.
Right off the bat, and to its credit, Tracy Flick Can’t Win acknowledges Election’s fundamental ickiness.
It’s an appealing echo of Election - Tracy Flick is once again inside a high school, gunning for a job for which she’s overly qualified, but has to fight way too hard to win. However, the meat of Tracy Flick Can’t Win stands in stark contrast to this synopsis.
Perrotta serves up his signature black comedy and shrewd wit in an expertly paced novel of great cleverness and charm.
In this culturally savvy sequel to his enduring best-seller, Election (1998), and its wildly popular film adaptation starring Reese Witherspoon, Perrotta again tells a smart, entertaining story from multiple perspectives, oral-history style. The breeziness of the pacing provides tart counterpoint to weightier themes of adultery, ambition, atonement, and revenge which Perrotta handles with a deft but determined satiric touch..
Where the sequel surpasses the original is in how the author keeps faith with the reader’s emotional intelligence on abstract notions of memory and culpability.
... harp and perfectly executed.
Perrotta’s writing is crisp and witty, and the new novel is a quick, fun read. Still, it lacks the depth of his best work and has the feel of a film treatment, almost as if the author hopes that Witherspoon will return to play Flick once again.
... the plot unfolds with the you-are-there feel of a documentary, or mockumentary perhaps, though the generally arch tone is belied by a not-so-funny ending.