Tracy Flick Can't Win by Tom Perrotta (2022) Our first and lasting impression: not at all the kind of book we expected. A bit funny at times. More than a little sad at times. And topped off with an abrupt, ripped-from-the-headlines climax that comes off as lazy and facile.......especially in a novel that sets itself up as thoughtful in observing its characters and their dilemmas.
If you never read "Election" the author's first go-round with the formidable Tracy Flick, don't feel left out.....neither did we.
But chances are, like us you well remember director Alexander Payne's 1999 film version, with Reese Witherspoon perfectly embodying Tracy, the ruthlessly ambitious, single minded high school over- achiever who so rankles her civics teacher played by Matthew Broderick.
'Tracy Flick Can't Win' quickly establishes itself as a bittersweet (bordering on depressive..) tour of dashed hopes, roads not taken and thwarted dreams......not to mention the collateral damage wreaked by marital infidelities.
The book finds Tracy at middle-age, having survived a few decades of fateful reversals of fortune. Life's potholes have left her as a single mom toiling far below her abilities and ambitions as an assistant high school principal.
As you might expect, Tracy hungers and lusts for the top job of principal, soon up for grabs due to the current principals long overdue retirement. Over-qualified and the smartest person in the room, she tirelessly lobbies the school board members for the position.......but Tracy, alas, though admired and respected,, remains as unloved unlikable and friendless as she was as a teenager.
(And no one's more accurate in this assessment of her personality than Tracy herself, painfully aware of her own limited patience and interest in raising her young daughter).
To boost morale, amid her school's losing football team and falling test scores, she goes along with a board member's plan to create an annual 'Hall Of Fame ceremony' for worthy alumni......and their most coveted first candidate for this high honor is the school's former football star Vito Falcone, who's led a failed life littered with alcoholism and destroyed marriages.
We thought the book would center around Tracy, but she functions, along with the pathetic Vito, as just one of a host of supporting characters Every so often, they're treated by the author with some amount of sharp, incisive wit, but mostly their backstories seem designed to make us sigh with resigned sadness.
And we'll resist the urge to fully weigh in on the off-the-rails method Tom Perrotta chooses to finish the book. Some may think of it as a powerful, savvy way to comment on the the way we live now, or as a social satire hand grenade lobbed in to neatly solve all plot points.
To us, it reeks of an author desperately grasping at what he thinks will net him a guaranteed movie deal. Good luck with that, Tom.....but we doubt you'd get Reese Witherspoon to play Tracy as merely a supporting player amidst a crowd....... 2 stars (**).
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