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Sarah takes Lucy to the local playground late at night while waiting for Todd, but Todd never shows up. Just when she starts to lose hope, Ronald appears, crying over his mother's death. Much to her own surprise, she feels sympathy for him, until he admits that he has given in to his compulsions and
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Todd is a handsome young father whom the neighborhood women have nicknamed the "Prom King." One of the other mothers dares Sarah: "Five bucks if you get his phone number." While jokingly discussing the bet, Todd and Sarah engage in a kiss that becomes more passionate than the ruse called for,
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to children, is allowed to live in his neighborhood, and starts a one-man vendetta to drive him out. Ronnie, for his part, finds himself ostracized by the community, and the one date that his mother forces him to go on is ruined when he gives in to temptation and
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twice already; he spends his "studying" time reliving his youth by watching a group of teenage skateboarders. Kathy later finds out about Todd's affair with the rather plain Sarah, and is more insulted than angry that Todd would go for someone less attractive.
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Larry is a retired police officer. Three years before, he left the force after shooting a Black teenager brandishing a toy gun at a local mall; the guilt became so unbearable that he collected his
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as "Perrotta's best" novel and further remarked that, "the juxtapositions whereby
Perrotta charts his several characters’ interconnected misadventures are handled with masterly authority."
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called "Slutty Kay". Todd, meanwhile, injures himself while attempting a skateboarding trick in front of the teenage skaters, and realizes that he doesn't see a future with Sarah.
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After Sarah watches Todd win a game for his neighborhood football team, they plan to leave their spouses. As Sarah prepares to leave with her daughter Lucy, Richard calls her from
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whose characters even at their most ridiculous seem blessed and ennobled by a luminous human aura." The novel was featured on numerous "Best Books of 2004" lists, including
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early. Now his wife has left him and taken their two sons. Larry, who loved his job and refuses to let go of it, is angry that Ronald "Ronnie" McGorvey, a
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raises the question of how a writer can be so entertainingly vicious and yet so full of sympathy. Bracingly tender moments stud
Perrotta's satire.".
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that interweaves the dark stories of seven main characters, all of whom live in the same Boston suburb during the middle of a hot summer.
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while watching children. Larry eventually gets into a shoving match with Ronnie's mother, May, who has a fatal stroke. Bertha, a school
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and May's best friend, takes Ronnie to the hospital, where May has written him a note that reads only "Please, please be a good boy."
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on May's death. Sarah just sits, baffled, wondering how she will raise her daughter, whom she feels she has greatly let down.
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killed a girl. Larry suddenly approaches, ready to kill Ronald, but finds it in his heart to offer his
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and bring their children to nap together while they have sex on the living room floor.
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leading to an affair between the two, who "happen" to cross each other at the local
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barista forever if she didn't. When she discovers his
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about the minor controversy arising from the use of
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