little children

I finished the novel "Little Children" by Tom Perrotta the other day. It was the story of young parents in a suburb, all of them with little children. They meet in the playground, exchange notes on parenthood and the impossibility of raising kids, and they either make friends with each other or they secretly hate each other.

Sarah stays home and takes care of her problematic little Lucy. She is not exactly sure of what she wants from life, but she thought she had it easy until she discovered her husband hugging mail-order woman's underwear-- another woman's used underwear.

Mary Ann was some sort of a control freak that even her lovemaking nights with her husband are scheduled on Tuesdays.

Todd was a stay-at-home husband whose wife is a high-profile woman. He is quite handsome and is nicknamed the "Prom King" by the playground regulars. He has failed the bar exam twice but his wife still thinks it is the ticket to a better life.

Sarah and Todd strike a friendship that soon leads to an affair. They then plan to run away, leaving what they perceive as miserable family lives behind: Sarah's husband's fixation on online pornography and Todd's wife's too-high expectations.

All this is complicated by the return of a convicted child molester to town, and one ex-cop's almost obsessive hounding of the man.

It is not your ordinary love story. It is a very real tale of how marriages get broken for a host of little reasons that accumulate and become bigger than one can handle. It is about raising children, teaching them how to love, and loving them to distraction. It is about how, despite all the love in the world, things still go wrong between married couple.

I found it good reading because one can so easily relate to the characters. I am of the same age range as the young parents in the story; I have little children. The troubles that beset them are too common in the household. And in every page I could stop and wonder, What if it was me? What would I have done? It makes you re-think, in the deeper recesses of your heart, if all your right reasons for marrying your husband will remain true for the years to come. It makes you think about the many times your heart was broken by the ones you love most. It makes you think about the things you would give up, and the things you would do, in the name of love.