For many Ivy League college students, spring break means a raucous road trip to a spot in the sun. For Danny, a Yale junior, the spring of 1982 means two weeks in central New Jersey behind the wheel of his dad's lunch truck, the "Roach Coach." But Danny can use the time with the coffee urn to try to make sense of a love life that's gotten a little complicated. There's loyal and patient hometown-honey Cindy and her recently dropped bombshell to contend with. And there's also lissome Polly in New Haven -- with her shifting moods, thrift-store dresses, and inconvenient liaison with a dashing professor. If girl problems aren't enough, there's the menace of the Lunch Monsters, a group of thugs who think Danny has planted the "Roach Coach" in their territory.

Populated by a vividly drawn cast of characters, Joe College is Tom Perrotta's warmest and funniest fiction yet -- a comic journey into the dark side of love, higher education, and food service.

"If... Holden Caulfield had hit the books a bit more assiduously and gotten out more, he might have turned into this story's engaging... protagonist...."
    KIRKUS REVIEWS

"I have a new favorite book, Joe College, and this is why: Tom Perrottta wrote it; an irresistible and accidentally heroic voice narrates it; angst has never been more delicious, food funnier, or Yale more accessible. What a great pleasure."
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