Election

Election is Tom Perrotta's second novel, published in 1998, and it takes a high school student council election as seriously as the people involved take it. The school is Winwood High in suburban New Jersey, the year is 1992, and on the evidence of the characters the contest for president is the most important thing happening anywhere.

The novel moves between several narrators, and the two who matter most are Tracy Flick, a relentlessly prepared achiever whom almost nobody in her year can stand, and Jim McAllister, a civics teacher who believes himself to be one of the good ones. Neither of them is reliable, and the gap between what they say and what they actually do is where most of the comedy lives. Perrotta lets each of them explain their own behaviour, which is why the book is funny about ambition without ever pretending that ambition is harmless.

The plot takes in Tracy's affair with another teacher, which has already ended two careers, McAllister's friendship with the man involved and the campaign of an unlikely third candidate running out of spite. It is a comedy about people rather than a verdict on them, which is what keeps the book from turning into a lecture. Alexander Payne's film version followed in 1999, and the story was continued more than twenty years later in Tracy Flick Can't Win.