You needn’t have read Election to enjoy Tracy Flick Can’t Win as Perrotta doles out just the right amount of backstory without bogging down in exposition. She is still 'moving forward, focusing on the task at hand,' but here she’s a richly rounded character enduring a quintessential modern American struggle.
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Yet even as the climax distracts and detracts from a thoughtful, intimate book, the novel earns its keep because Perrotta has reclaimed Tracy Flick from the movie version. Tracy Flick Can’t Win has its flaws: a few too many hot button issues glibly tossed into the mix without real exploration and an over-the-top melodramatic, action-oriented ending. Returning to the hits for a sequel isn’t typically a good idea in literature. The best of them realize they’ve got to recover their humanity. Perrotta’s female protagonists are stymied, but his male protagonists are stunted, often in ways that lead straight to disaster. They’re better people, smarter, more self-aware, nicer-too nice, perhaps. His female protagonists probably outnumber the male ones, and they’re perfectly well drawn. Perrotta doesn’t write only about men, of course. replaces sexual spectacle with football mania.
His dialogue is never as exuberant as when his guys talk guy talk. Perrotta is simply more enthralled by how men school one another than he is by anything else. Plus, Perrotta has what it takes to revisit the past without being predictable. Satire has always had an admonitory function, and besides, some people are so obnoxious that a writer has to slow-walk the reader through their awfulness. Tracy Flick Can’t Win is frankly didactic.
Nor will you wonder whether you missed the nuances. You will not close this book commiserating with the likes of Mr. The new book is harsher than the earlier one, reflecting the uglier tenor of our times, as well as, I suspect, Perrotta’s desire to clear up any possible confusion about whose side he’s on. Perrotta joins the ranks of the revisionists.
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