--- title: Everyday People, Extraordinary Books description: Tom Perrotta has documented decades' worth of social issues in deceptively domestic novels. He addressed modern parenting in 2004's Little Children, the Christian right in... canonical: https://time.com/4894992/everyday-people-extraordinary-books/ author: Daniel D'Addario article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-08-10T10:31:22.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T16:56:03.018Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Everyday People, Extraordinary Books og:description: Tom Perrotta has documented decades' worth of social issues in deceptively domestic novels. He addressed modern parenting in 2004's Little Children, the Christian right in... og:url: https://time.com/4894992/everyday-people-extraordinary-books/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt179e52adc1776088/6988d901ab6d7737cd6af532/tom-perrota.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: tom-perrotta og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Everyday People, Extraordinary Books twitter:description: Tom Perrotta has documented decades' worth of social issues in deceptively domestic novels. He addressed modern parenting in 2004's Little Children, the Christian right in... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt179e52adc1776088/6988d901ab6d7737cd6af532/tom-perrota.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Everyday People, Extraordinary Books > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with Ally. Ally is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: July 2026. ## Ally: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Ally is a digital financial services company offering online-only banking, including checking and savings accounts, through Ally.com and its mobile apps. Launched in 2009 as an original disruptor in financial services, Ally was built to challenge outdated banking norms with a simpler, more convenient way to bank. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account.  by [Daniel D'Addario](https://time.com/author/daniel-daddario/)  ## Daniel D'Addario Aug 10, 2017 10:31 AM UTC  Getty Images  by [Daniel D'Addario](https://time.com/author/daniel-daddario/)  ## Daniel D'Addario Aug 10, 2017 10:31 AM UTC Tom Perrotta has documented decades’ worth of social issues in deceptively domestic novels. He addressed modern parenting in 2004’s _Little Children_, the Christian right in 2007’s _The Abstinence Teacher_ and the response to grief in 2011’s _The Leftovers_. All those works take place in suburban America and have at their centers workaday folks living against the backdrop of sweeping change. In examining the national interest by way of dinner-table conversation, Perrotta has created some of the most memorably human drama of his era. His new novel, Mrs. Fletcher, about a mother and son, is the latest example. “I never feel like I’m writing about the suburbs,” says Perrotta. “I feel like I’m writing about people who live in the suburbs, and people are a subject of inexhaustible interest.” Mrs. Fletcher is a look at two kinds of sexual revolution: the breakdown of barriers created by Internet porn and the new manner of talking about sex on campus. It will spark plenty of conversations before college drop-off begins in August. To Perrotta, Internet porn–the sort that comes to obsess empty-nester Eve Fletcher–has been a democratizing force: “I certainly don’t want to be the person defending porn, but one of the things it’s done is show that real people are not as sexually picky as American commercial culture might lead us to believe. There’s a place in porn for older people, people of different races.” Meanwhile, new cultural wokeness–and rigidity–creates confusion and resentment for Brendan, Eve’s blithely self-assured, unsophisticated son. Perrotta demonstrates how the conversation around re-envisioning sex and gender, one that occurs entirely above Brendan’s head, has consequences. In the author’s telling, it “leads to a kind of puritanical calling-out of people who have sinned against these goals.” This may be the latest of Perrotta’s works to be adapted by Hollywood. HBO, which broadcast the grand-scale adaptation _The Leftovers_, has optioned Mrs. Fletcher, following film versions of Perrotta novels _Election_ and _Little Children_. But the in-demand author’s wading into the contemporary campus comes from a prosaic place: chats with his college-age children, who also helped inspire his previous books. (_Little Children_ came out when they were just that.) The parent and his children have had very different experiences. “I looked at college as this place of freedom and liberation and fun,” says Perrotta (Yale ’83). “And now a lot of people experience it as a kind of minefield, where you have to watch what you say. Maybe that’s not a bad thing, but I think the sense of it as a fun place or a place where the world gets bigger has become much more complicated.” Perceptive of slight shifts in the social current but never condemning his sinning characters’ souls, Perrotta proves an amiable guide through it all. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4894992/everyday-people-extraordinary-books/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4894992/everyday-people-extraordinary-books/"},"headline":"Everyday People, Extraordinary Books","datePublished":"2017-08-10T10:31:22.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-23T16:56:03.018Z","description":"Tom Perrotta has documented decades' worth of social issues in deceptively domestic novels. 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