Rating: 
Summary: Where's the Ending?
Review: This is the first book by Perrotta I've read, and three quarters of the way through it, I'm thinking this guy is great. The story was amusing and captures college life at a private school very well. Then the story fell apart. This is a book in need of an ending.
Rating: 
Summary: Tom greater
Review: After meeting Tom Perotta just last week, I rushed to the nearest book store and picked up this book. As soon as I got home I drop every thing right there on the floor just to read this much anticipated novel, and I couldn't put it down. Any one reading this should defintely order this book. It's funny, to say the least and anyone with a pulse will agree with me.
Rating:
Summary: A Cad's Self Discovery
Review: Based upon the reviews I had high expectations for this book. The theme is enticing: a lower middle class New Jersey guy's adjustment and transformation at a citadel of America's economic and intellectual elite. The first quarter of the book suggests that it might fulfill the potential of such a plot. However, it meanders and fizzles out, and concludes with a surrealistic ending incompatible with the rest of the novel.In terms of the broader issues, the protagonist Danny comes across as a callow self centered, albeit good natured, guy who is willing to turn his back as well as step on friends and family rather than let them thwart his chance at escaping blue collar New Jersey after having securing access to America's highest strata at Yale. While he suffers some minor angst over his increasing detachment from his working class origins he increasingly owns, and justifies, an elitist attitude and values as well as distain for the culture of the hoi polli. This sense of meritocratic entitlement and fear of falling manifests itself in a callous, craven, and callow failure to return calls, much less confront his responsibility after impregnating a working class girl (from a social set he didn't risk mingling with in high school) who alleviated his boredom one summer home from college. While seemingly macho in confronting mob muscle attempting to frighten him off his father's lunch business route, the impetus appears more his ego, as he shows a callous disregard for the economic and physical danger this presents his family. The book is honest, it is frank, unfortunately it is probably very realistic. The protagonist and his self discovery describe a vain man made increasingly unattractive by his quest to secure access to success. Disappointing, the hubris he meets at the end is insufficiently developed. After being delayed throughout the novel, the comeuppance warranted further development. I can fully appreciate a dark plot and sinister characters. However, I really don't think that Perrotta intended to represent Danny as a cad. However, in reality these may accurately be the type of the characteristics and values acquired by those who secure success by upper movement through academia, where one quickly seeks to distance himself from unrefined origins once receiving access to the "top". The book also, uncomfortably perceptively, recognizes the arrogance of those advancing through academia who feel that while they are entitled to such upward movement, others are not. This novel leads the reader to view the success and values of the meritocracy with a jaundiced eye. However, I don't think that was the author's intent; I think Perrotta wanted to depict the pitfalls which might inexplicably confront a regular working class "good guy" once he earns the access to this rarified strata.
Rating:
Summary: Another Winner
Review: as a 22-year-old recent college grad, i've had trouble finding books i really enjoyed and could tear through. the minor exceptions certainly have included books by tom perrotta. i guess this is the perfect book for me--one of my favorite authors writing about a time very familiar to me--but with that said, i really think joe college was terrific. once again, as he did in the wishbones, perrotta comically challenges the reader time and again to stay loyal to the protagonist as danny digs himself deeper and deeper. the characters were real and entertaining, and countless passages worth highlighting. i did enjoy the movie, but i found election to be not as great as perrotta's earlier works. my confidence was definitely more than restored with joe college, and i look forward to perrotta's next product. feel free to give joe college as a gift to anyone between the ages of 20 and 24--they'll thank you for it, believe me.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book, but not up to Perrotta par
Review: I think I've come to expect too much from Tom Perrotta. After three classic books, I came into Joe College with high expectations. I just didn't feel that Joe College provoked me the same as the others or elicited my emotions like the others. All that aside, it's still a Tom Perrotta book, so I definitely recommend it. He's the man. But if you simply want a taste of Tom Perrotta, go with Election or The Wishbones first.
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Summary: This book brings back memories
Review: Although I am a female and attended college a decade before Danny, this book brought back many of the memories of my college years, including all of the angst, the students' removal from the "real world" that existed off-campus, the bull sessions, and so on. If you loved "Election" and "The Wishbones", you will like "Joe College". I felt that it lacked the immediacy of Perrotta's earlier books, and I really did not care as much about the characters. Perhaps this is because I did not think that they were as fleshed-out as the characters in his other books. Despite this, "Joe College" was a worthwhile book to read. Danny's inner monologues are very well done, as is the contrast of his life at Yale with his parents' and Cindy's blue collar lives in New Jersey. The details of college life are very accurate and authentic, pulling the reader right into Danny's on-campus and home life.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: Joe College, Tom Perrotta's third novel, is his weakest yet. There's no diminution in the facility of the prose, no laziness in his eye for a gag, no betrayal of his New Jersey heritage. But it's hard to avoid the feeling that Perrotta is mining an exhausted seam. After two novels and one book of short stories about New Jersey youth and twentysomethings trying to find their feet in the world, isn't about time he ventured into different territory? One can't help feeling he has chosen the easy option by telling the tale of a working class Jersey boy on his great adventure at Yale. The Nick Hornby comparisons are apposite: both occupy a specific geographical and social territory, and both have suffered a noticeable thinning of invention with their most recent novels. As in 'About A Boy', the characters in Joe College feel like sketches of caricatures of stereotypes. The occasional laser clarity of an observation cannot blind the alert reader to this. Consequently, it's hard to feel as involved with the characters as we did in 'The Wishbones' and 'Election'. Perrotta is a lovely writer, with a facile, pellucid style that enables the reader to slip through 'Joe College' in hours. And you will enjoy it - but one hoped for so much more after the eager wait for the novel to arrive.
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Summary: 4 head-crushed bearcans for insider's guide to Yale
Review: 1. Identify the more logical sequence: a. "Tom Brown at Oxford", "Zuleika Dobson", "This Side of Paradise", "The Adventures of Dobie Gillis", "Joe College". b. "Animal House", "Dazed and Confused", "The Sure Thing", "Outside Providence", "Joe College". Well, hey, it's (b). Four head-crushed beercans for Tom Perotta, whose recreation of Yalie life ca. 1979-83 has the light touch of a Nick Hornsby novel. Running through the junior year of a Jersey-born English major, "Joe College" allows themes from (a) to peep through, with the blitheness of a first novel from the Warren Wilson School school. Pencil Dick shares a dorm suite, dates, studies, and on vacations fills in for his dad on the lunch wagon. The series of episodes are strung together with expertise. Characters are quickly drawn, distinguished more slowly; dialogue is believable but entertaining. There's a part in this for Renee Zellweger, once she's done with "Bridget Jones".
Rating:
Summary: For Recovering English Majors Everywhere!
Review: A wonderful novel which will satisfy any self-reflective needs for someone who came of age after disco but before the Go Go 80's. Danny, the first person narrator, is a working class Italian American kid from New Jersey who is here moving into his Junior year at Yale. He straddles these worlds with a freshly romantic appreciation for the peculiarities of both. His father drives a lunch truck and Danny helps out during summer and spring breaks and it is on this job that he reconnects with a high school acquaintance Cindy. Their halting relationship (she really loves him) creates the third act complication which follows Danny north to New Haven and his whole other life as a promising English Major and possible leading man for Polly, the social opposite of Cindy. It's not easy to call this book monumental because the events of the book are very personal and sort of soft, but the accretion of detail, and the rhythm and echoes between the characters and their scenes create a wonderful overall effect. Perratta is working with the huge American contradiction of what is earned and what is given and his first-person character is a bridge between a father who has made his income with his back (actually, his butt, but nevermind that) and his own future which will be built with his mind. Perratta mines Yale in the 80's for wonderful scenes of gifted children in the throes of their own amusement. And the thrown-off tone and approach of the storytelling actually conceals a deep and incisive portrait of a generation now taking charge of all of our futures. A splendid read and highly recommended
Rating:
Summary: Another Winner
Review: Six years ago at the Breadloaf Conference, I was introduced to Tom Perrotta through Bad Haircut. With The Wishbones and Election, I became an even bigger fan. Now with Joe College, I'm convinced that Tom Perrotta is one of the funniest and most insightful writers around. For all of us middle-aging men who were too young to be babyboomers and too old to be a part of Generation X, Joe College's Danny perfectly captures the mindset of the unnamed generation. With sly humor and just enough introspection, Perrotta's Danny is the perfect protagonist of the Reagan years, caught between being Joe College and Joe Average. Perrotta has written another winning novel, another winning novel that speaks to all the guys who worked summers in their own Roach Coaches and still found a way to be cool!
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