Tracy Flick can't win : a novel
(Book)

Tracy Flick is all grown up now. Although she never realized her dream of becoming the president of the United States, she is the assistant principal of a suburban New Jersey high school, and that's pretty much the same thing, right? Just kidding. But now Tracy does have a chance of securing the top spot at Green Meadow High School, since Principal Jack Weede is retiring. She should be a shoo-in, but during an ill-considered pre-interview cocktail hour with school board president Kyle Dorfman, a Tesla-driving tech titan, Tracy blithely agrees to support his idea of creating a Green Meadow "Hall of Fame" to honor worthy alumni, staff, and students. It turns out to be a disastrous, even fatal, mistake. 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.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: With a "she's back" publicity campaign calling all Perrotta and Witherspoon fans, this will be a much-requested early summer read.

The heroine of Perrotta's Election returns in this sharp and perfectly executed story of frustrated ambition. Having failed to achieve her youthful career goals, Tracy Flick, now in her mid-40s, is an assistant principal at a New Jersey high school and single mother to 11-year-old Sophia. Though beaten down a little by life, Tracy still harbors ambition and remains determined to reach her goals, and she desperately wants to be voted her school's next principal. To that end, she attaches herself to a tech millionaire's dubious scheme to create a Hall of Fame for the school. The number one choice for its first inductee--though not without controversy--is former football hero Vito Falcone, who has also not lived up to the promise of his glory days. He is currently divorced, in AA, and possibly suffering from CTE. As the Hall of Fame selection committee's debate over who should receive the honor highlights class and race schisms in the high school, an unexpected act of violence alters the course of several lives. As ever, Perrotta writes incisively from several different points of view, illuminating the frustrated inner lives of his characters; call it Winesburg, N.J. Dominating it all is Tracy, whom the reader comes to understand better even through her cringeworthy machinations. This is the rare sequel that lives up to the original. (May)

The campaign to create a Hall of Fame at a suburban New Jersey high school lures a few skeletons out of their closets. Perrotta's 10th novel, following the delightful Mrs. Fletcher (2017), revives the now-iconic protagonist of his third, Election (1998). Tracy Flick, portrayed so unforgettably by Reese Witherspoon in the movie, is not only back, she's still in high school--now as Dr. Flick, assistant principal in another New Jersey town. Combining narrated chapters with short first-person "testimonies" by five of the characters, 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. As the story begins, Tracy is at the breakfast table with her 10-year-old daughter, reading the paper. The connection between the #MeToo headlines and her own past (she's always thought of what happened with her sophomore English teacher as an "affair") is perturbing. Her once-unshakeable belief in her own agency has been almost fatally challenged since then, shoving her off her track to the presidency of the United States (not "a crazy ambition," according to her), now offering as booby prize the possibility of taking over for the principal when he retires at the end of the year. But in the meantime, she has to deal with this stupid Hall of Fame project, which pushes many of her buttons. Once again, characters you shouldn't like at all become strangely sympathetic in Perrotta's hands. Adulterers, egotists, bullies--well, we all make mistakes. As much as forgiveness seems the explicit theme of the book, its evil twin, revenge, burbles menacingly beneath the surface, and the ending is a shocker. Nobody told this master of dark comedy there are things you can't make jokes about. Watch him try. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Tracy Flick is all grown up now. Although she never realized her dream of becoming the president of the United States, she is the assistant principal of a suburban New Jersey high school, and that's pretty much the same thing, right? Just kidding. But now Tracy does have a chance of securing the top spot at Green Meadow High School, since Principal Jack Weede is retiring. She should be a shoo-in, but during an ill-considered pre-interview cocktail hour with school board president Kyle Dorfman, a Tesla-driving tech titan, Tracy blithely agrees to support his idea of creating a Green Meadow "Hall of Fame" to honor worthy alumni, staff, and students. It turns out to be a disastrous, even fatal, mistake. 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.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: With a she's back publicity campaign calling all Perrotta and Witherspoon fans, this will be a much-requested early summer read. Copyright 2022 Booklist Reviews.

International award winner Cercas expands to literary suspense inEven the Darkest Night, featuring a young ex-con who read Les Misérables in jail and after the murder of his sex-worker mother joins the Barcelona police and is sent to investigate a particularly brutal double murder outside the city. In another genre blender, the New York Times best-selling Crosley purveys humor, psychological twistiness, and strong writing to create what could be a Cult Classic featuring a woman who leaves a work dinner to buy cigarettes and encounters a string of ghostly ex-boyfriends (100,000-copy first printing). From Dermansky (e.g., the multi-best-booked The Red Car), Hurricane Girl sends 32-year-old Allison Brody from the West Coast to the East Coast, where she buys a small house on the beach and is promptly hit by a Category 3 hurricane that leaves her with a bleeding head and some very confused thoughts. Following Delicious Foods, which boast PEN/Faulkner and Hurston/Wright Legacy honors, Hannaham's Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta features a woman who transitioned in prison and is finally released after more than two decades, returning apprehensively to a New York she barely knows and a family that doesn't understand her (40,000-copy first printing). Winner of the Publishing Triangle's Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement, Holleran returns after 13 years with The Kingdom of Sand, whose nameless narrator has survived the death of friends from AIDS and his parents from old age and tragedy and is surviving his own end time by enjoying classic films and near-anonymous sexual encounters (50,000-copy first printing). In Laskey's So Happy for You, following Center for Fiction First Novel finalist Under the Rainbow, Robin and Ellie have always been best friends, but queer academic Robin has her doubts about being maid of honor in Ellie's forthcoming wedding. In the medieval-set Lapnova, from ever-edgy, New York Times best-selling Moshfegh, hapless shepherd's son Marek—close only to a midwife feared for her ungodly way with nature—is caught up in the violence surrounding a cruel and corrupt lord. In this follow-up to Newman's multi-starred The Heavens, all The Men in the world mysteriously vanish at once, leaving women both to grieve and to rebuild. Prix Marguerite Yourcenar winner Nganang follows up hisLJ best-booked When the Plums Are Ripe with A Trail of Crab Tracks, whose protagonist slowly reveals his story—and the story of Cameroon's independence—on a prolonged stay with his son in the United States. The dedicated assistant principal at a New Jersey public high school thinks she has a lock on the principal's job when the current principal retires, but alas for the durable protagonist of Perrotta's Election, Tracy Flick [still] Can't Win (300,000-copy first printing). In Thrust, a motherless child from the late 21st century learns that she can connect with people over the last two centuries, from a French sculptor to a dictator's daughter; from Yuknavitch, a Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize finalist.

Bringing back the heroine of popular Election, best-selling author Perrotta shows that Tracy Flick still can't win. In the blue-collar, family-oriented town of Green Meadow, change happens slowly. The town needs a new high school building, but the taxpayers prioritize other projects. High school principal Jack Weede and Tracy, the assistant principal who shouldered much of Jack's workload after his heart attack, wants the job. School Board President Kyle Dorfman assures Tracy that she has his full support. Tracy seems to be the best candidate in the applicant pool for principal, but Green Meadow's dynamic and winning ex-football coach reappears, wanting both his old job and the principal's job, too. The school board and the school superintendent waver. Meanwhile, School Board President Kyle Dorfman wants to establish a Hall of Fame at the school, and tensions escalate. VERDICT Perrotta uses his main characters to tell the story from multiple points of view, successfully bringing out the dynamics of everyday life. There is something for everyone in this story, and readers of fiction that parallels real life will enjoy.— Joanna M. Burkhardt

The heroine of Perrotta's Election returns in this sharp and perfectly executed story of frustrated ambition. Having failed to achieve her youthful career goals, Tracy Flick, now in her mid-40s, is an assistant principal at a New Jersey high school and single mother to 11-year-old Sophia. Though beaten down a little by life, Tracy still harbors ambition and remains determined to reach her goals, and she desperately wants to be voted her school's next principal. To that end, she attaches herself to a tech millionaire's dubious scheme to create a Hall of Fame for the school. The number one choice for its first inductee—though not without controversy—is former football hero Vito Falcone, who has also not lived up to the promise of his glory days. He is currently divorced, in AA, and possibly suffering from CTE. As the Hall of Fame selection committee's debate over who should receive the honor highlights class and race schisms in the high school, an unexpected act of violence alters the course of several lives. As ever, Perrotta writes incisively from several different points of view, illuminating the frustrated inner lives of his characters; call it Winesburg, N.J. Dominating it all is Tracy, whom the reader comes to understand better even through her cringeworthy machinations. This is the rare sequel that lives up to the original. (May)