Perfect Little World (Wilson)

Perfect Little World 
Kevin Wilson, 2017
HarperCollins
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062450326


Summary
When Isabelle Poole meets Dr. Preston Grind, she’s fresh out of high school, pregnant with her art teacher's baby, and totally on her own. Izzy knows she can be a good mother but without any money or relatives to help, she’s left searching.

Dr. Grind, an awkwardly charming child psychologist, has spent his life studying family, even after tragedy struck his own. Now, with the help of an eccentric billionaire, he has the chance to create a “perfect little world”—to study what would happen when ten children are raised collectively, without knowing who their biological parents are.

He calls it The Infinite Family Project and he wants Izzy and her son to join.

This attempt at a utopian ideal starts off promising, but soon the gentle equilibrium among the families disintegrates: unspoken resentments between the couples begin to fester; the project's funding becomes tenuous; and Izzy’s growing feelings for Dr. Grind make her question her participation in this strange experiment in the first place.

Written with the same compassion and charm that won over legions of readers with The Family Fang (2011), Kevin Wilson shows us with grace and humor that the best families are the ones we make for ourselves. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1978
• Where—Winchester, Tennessee, USA
• Education—B.A., Vanderbilt University; M.F.A., University of Florida
• Awards—Shirley Jackson Award
• Currently—lives in Swanee, Tennessee


Kevin Wilson is the author of the novels Family Fang (2011) and Perfect Little World (2017). His short story collection, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth (2009), received an Alex Award from the American Library Association and the Shirley Jackson Award.

Wilson's fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, Tin House, One Story, A Public Space, and elsewhere, and has appeared in four volumes of the New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best anthology as well as The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2012.  He has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Rivendell, and the KHN Center for the Arts.

Born and raised in Tennessee, Wilson now lives in Sewanee, Tennessee, with his wife, the poet Leigh Anne Couch, and his sons, Griff and Patch. He is an Associate Professor in the English Department at Sewanee: The University of the South. (Adapted from the author's website.)

Book Reviews
Kevin Wilson…knows how to construct a story.… Like Vonnegut, like Atwood, Wilson is up to serious business—like them, he's also very funny.… [Perfect Little World is] a novel you keep reading for old-fashioned reasons—because it's a good story, and you need to know what happens. But you also keep reading because you want to know what a good family is. Everyone wants to know that.
John Irving - New York Times Book Review


Charming.… Wilson pulls off his sweet-and-tart tone.… The novel delights in the project’s Willy Wonkaesque sense of antic chaos.
Lisa Zeldner - Washington Post


The sheer energy of imagination in Wilson’s work makes other writers of realistic fiction look lazy.… The novel’s grand finale…reminds us that not everything unpredictable is painful or bad, and that conventional arrangements have no monopoly on the profound connections that make family.
Newsday


Family is far more than a biological bond; that’s not a groundbreaking idea. But Wilson has found a lovely new way of telling readers something they know by heart.
Houston Chronicle


Delicious.… Wilson is such an inventive and witty writer.… [His] "perfect little world" of a novel pretty much lives up to its title.
NPR


Persistently compassionate.… Wilson’s best moments are funny and earnest.… [His] crisp language and smart plotting make Perfect Little World immensely likable and absolutely enjoyable.
GQ


Quirky.… Wilson’s Perfect Little World finds its bliss in the vast disconnect between people’s best intentions and where they land.
Entertainment Weekly


[Kevin Wilson's] sweet and thoroughly satisfying second novel.… Wilson grounds his premise in credible human motivations and behavior, resulting in a memorable cast of characters. He uses his intriguing premise to explore the meaning of family and the limits of rational decision making.
Publishers Weekly


It takes a village, or in this case a well-meaning, utopian parenting study, to create the ingredients for this almost farcical yet moving novel about love, parenting, and the families we create for ourselves. —Lauren Gilbert, Sachem P.L., Holbrook, NY
Library Journal


(Starred review.) Stellar.…  Compelling.…  Realer and wiser and sadder and eventually reassuring about human nature than dozens of other novels.
Booklist


(Starred review.) This is another bittersweet story about messed-up families from the talented Wilson.… [The novel] checks in on the "Infinite Family Project" every year or two…[and] delves into the drama and tensions inherent in this strange aquarium.… A moving and sincere reflection on what it truly means to become a family.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for Perfect Little World...then take off on your own:

1. What was your initial impression of Dr. Preston Grind when he is first introduced in the novel? Do you find him—or his goals—sympathetic? Did your views of him change during the course of the novel?

2. How did Grind's childhood affect his adult life, the kind of person he is? Discuss the "Constant Friction Method." What were the goals of his that experiment? Were his parents crazy?

3. Talk about Izzy. How would you describe her character?

4. Follow-up to Question 3: Given Izzy's lack of family support (or shall we say the horror that is her family), what do you make of her decision to sign her child over to Grind—does she have other viable options?

5. What is Mrs. Jackson's motives? Were you suspicious of her? How does her background as an orphan shape her decisions?

6. Kevin Wilson asks us to consider the definition and make-up, of family. What is family? What forms does it take in this book? Do you think there is an ideal family constellation—or is it possible for a solid and effective family structure to take different shapes?

7. The characters, Izzy, Grind, and Mrs. Jackson, all products of broken or nonexistent families, long for community and a sense of belonging. How does that trait evidence itself in each of these characters?

8. Talk about the breast feeding assembly line, which makes Izzy feel as if she...

had ended a shift in a factory that had been imagined by Walt Disney, the bright colors and happy music overriding the weird fact that you were working on an assembly line that created superbabies.

9. Kevin Wilson is both clever and perceptive, writing often with humor. What parts of this novel did you find humorous? Consider, for instance, the Stanford marshmallow experiment. (Do you know that it is a real-life experiment?)

10. Talk, of course, about the irony inherent in the novel's title. Can you come up with any other titles that might be appropriate?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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