Tom Perrotta delves into sex and parenthood
In Tom Perrotta’s novel and his subsequent hit HBO TV show The Leftovers, the citizens of a small town must cope with the disappearance of their loved ones following the rapture-like “Sudden Departure.” Although Perrotta refers to the postapocalyptic story as an outlier in his writing career, the middle-aged protagonist of his seventh novel, Mrs. Fletcher, is also forced to rebuild a life alone after her son leaves for college. Though instead of The Leftovers’ mysterious chain-smoking cults, Eve Fletcher’s new world involves online porn, racy selfies and sexual experimentation.
Set once again in Perrotta’s trademark suburbs, the affable but lonely Eve, a divorced single mom who works at a senior centre, is struggling to find her own identity and to fill the hours now that her jock son, Brandon, is off to college. His departure is a textbook parental nightmare, as Eve overhears Brandon having sex with his girlfriend — a less shocking event than the debasing language he uses during the act. Later that night, Eve receives an anonymous text calling her a “MILF” (if you’re not sure what that means, just Google it, like Eve did), demanding “a naked pic!!” Curiosity gets the better of Eve, though, and sends her down the online rabbit-hole of amateur MILF porn. Meanwhile, Brandon, the fist-bumping, beer-swilling bro, is learning firsthand that college isn’t the 24-7 party he imagined and that his actions toward women have real, and publicly humiliating, consequences.
“I was really trying to react to that moment when something that has been an intense academic conversation about gender broke into the mainstream,” says Perrotta, from his home outside Boston. “People who I don’t think were fully prepared for it were exposed to some ideas that were surprising and challenging. There was both a pushback and an embrace — we’re in that funny moment where I don’t think a consensus has established itself. That goes for lots of sexual matters at the moment.”
The tension between Eve’s new-found life — she enrols in a community college course on gender and society taught by a transgender instructor and reaches out, literally, to a female co-worker — and Brandon’s deteriorating sense of self also provides Mrs. Fletcher with its comic heart. “Eve is so eager for her son to have a transformative experience, and instead she is the one who has that experience,” says Perrotta. “She finds her way to a new self. It’s a rocky journey but a positive one, whereas Brandon is defending his old self. He doesn’t want to be changed by college and as a result, he’s in a defensive crouch for most of the book.”
With Mrs. Fletcher, Perrotta, author of several successful Hollywood adaptations, including Election and the Academy Award — nominated Little Children, continues his career-long exploration of sexual behaviour and culture, though he is still surprised by how often school settings and matters of education seep into his work. “I think I just follow my own obsessions to some degree,” says Perrotta, who earned his degrees at Syracuse University and Yale (where he would later teach). “Maybe the schools relate to the sense of generational difference and the sense that this is where culture and morality gets transmitted and discussed within a culture that otherwise pushes forward without reflecting much.”
One could argue that Perrotta’s books also trace a lifetime of parenting, from diapers to weekly FaceTime chats. Little Children followed several 30-something parents who are not as innocent as they’d like their neighbours to believe. Mrs. Fletcher ultimately deals with a mother who wants the best for her child, and a son who knows he’s disappointed her.
Perrotta’s own kids have now left the nest, off into a world in flux where sex is always just one tap or swipe away. “I think growing older and having kids and watching them become adults has really solidified for me that every generation reinvents sex for itself,” Perrotta says. “In a way it’s hard for us to help each other, for parents to help their kids, because kids are operating in a culture that we don’t fully understand.” Sue Carter is the editor of Quill and Quire.