Tom Perrotta

Tom Perrotta can be hard to pin down: in Election, he wickedly sent up American politics with a dark comedy of high school ambition; his treatment of suburban couples in 2004’s bestseller Little Children earned him a comparison to Chekhov in the New York Times.  And in 2011’s The Leftovers, he pushed the boundaries of realism and fantasy to create a haunting meditation on loss.  But his latest novel, Mrs. Fletcher, breaks new ground again, with the story of a middle-aged single mother who finds herself exploring a new identity – one in part defined by her sudden exposure to the world of internet pornography.  Simultaneously, the novel tracks Eve's son Brendan as he arrives at college, full of ideas and desires that have been influenced by the same online sources.  In this episode, the author talks with Bill Tipper about his eyes-wide-open confrontation with American sexuality in forms virtual and otherwise.

Om Podcasten

We're no longer producing new episodes of this show, but you can find us now at Poured Over on Apple Podcasts. Every author has a story beyond the one that they put down on paper. The Barnes & Noble Podcast goes between the lines with today's most interesting writers, exploring what inspires them, what confounds them, and what they were thinking when they wrote the books we’re talking about.