The Wishbones - Hardcover

Perrotta, Tom

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0399142673 ISBN 13: 9780399142673

Publisher: Putnam Adult, 1997

Synopsis

A thirty-one-year-old rock'n'roll guitarist decides to get married, only to begin an affair with Gretchen, a New York poet, and finds himself torn between letting his dreams die and having a steady gig. A first novel.

About this title

Review:

Tom Perrotta's first novel, The Wishbones, is all about that much-maligned class of 30-ish men who still live at home with their parents, guys who make furtive love to their girlfriends--if they have them at all--in the basement rec room or the back seat of a car. But Dave Raymond, the protagonist of The Wishbones, doesn't waste his time on Star Trek reruns or computer games; he spends his weekends playing in a wedding band called The Wishbones, using the rapidly receding dream of rock stardom as an excuse to put off growing up. The sudden death of a fellow musician sends Dave into something of a tailspin, however, and in a moment of weakness, he proposes to his longtime girlfriend, Julie. The engagement has hardly been announced when Dave meets Gretchen, a bridesmaid at one of the weddings at which The Wishbones play, and before long he's having serious doubts about his own marital plans.

Everybody knows someone like Dave, but a real-life puer aeternus is rarely as entertaining as Perrotta's fictional one. Perrotta wisely surrounds his sad-sack protagonist with an array of entertaining supporting characters, from a joint-smoking priest to one of Dave's band-mates whose life work is a musical based on Kennedy's assassination. By the time The Wishbones winds down to its well-deserved end, readers will be wishing for a second novel from Tom Perrotta soon.

About the Author:

Tom Perrotta teaches writing at Harvard.

About this edition

• Publisher: Putnam Adult
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0399142673
• ISBN 13: 9780399142673
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 290