Joe College Paperback - 2006

First line

All through that winter and into the spring, when our Tuesday- and Thursday-night dinner shifts were done, Matt and I would sit at the long table near the salad bar and plan his end-of-the-year party, our voices echoing importantly in the cavernous wood-panelled dining hall.

From the jacket flap

For many college students, Spring Break means fun and sun in Florida. For Danny, a Yale junior, it means two weeks behind the wheel of the Roach Coach, his father's lunch truck, which plies the parking lots of office parks in central New Jersey.

But Danny can use the time behind the coffee urn to try and 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 back in New Haven--with her shifting moods, perfect thrift store dresses and inconvenient liaison with a dashing professor.

If girl problems aren't enough, there's the constant menace of the Lunch Monsters, a group of thugs who think Danny has planted the Roach Coach in their territory.

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.