[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in SoHo. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. I'm really grateful that you're here. On today's show, two ways to explore New York history, a preview of the annual Jane's Walk festival, and an exhibit on New York under British occupation. Plus, we'll have highlights from our April Get Lit book club event with Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney. First, here's a preview of our May pick.

[music]

If you haven't already heard, we've announced our May Get Lit with All of It book club selection. We are reading the brand new novel from best-selling author Tom Perrotta. It's called Ghost Town. It just came out this week, hot off the presses. The story is set in 1970s suburban New Jersey. An 8th grader named Jimmy is grappling with a terrible loss. In the midst of his grief, he finds himself with two new friends, a stoner named Eddie and an older teenager named Olivia, who also has experienced a death in the family. Olivia has a Ouija board and wants Jimmy to use it. The novel also follows Jimmy as an adult, now Jay Perry. He's a successful writer who has been invited back to his hometown by the mayor. That visit brings up all kinds of memories.

Thanks to our partners at the New York Public Library. Library card holders can check out an e-copy of Ghost Town right now with no wait times. You can also grab tickets to our live event with Tom Perrotta on Wednesday, May 27th. Head to wnyc.org/getlit for more information. First, now, here in studio to give us a little preview is Tom Perrotta. Tom, welcome to the studio.

Tom Perrotta: Oh, thank you. It's great to be here.

Alison Stewart: I read that you started plotting for this novel in 2020.

Tom Perrotta: It was definitely a pandemic novel. I was going back to the house I grew up in because my elderly mom was having some trouble and, of course, was kind of isolated there. I just spent that whole period in the house that I grew up in, sleeping in my old bedroom and remembering-- it just seemed like a world full of ghosts to me. That somehow led me to this book and to making the ghost a literal part of a novel.

Alison Stewart: Yes, it's kind of interesting. You aren't necessarily known for writing autofiction, but a story sort of draws from your own background, as you said. What did you want to capture about being a kid in New Jersey in the '70s?

Tom Perrotta: Well, we talk about childhood now and how intensely surveilled kids are and how the parents are always looking over their shoulder. You can't actually ever get lost, right? Your parents can track you on a phone, and every day you're taking pictures. I think that there was that strange free range quality, which I think we can romanticize, and there's some good things about it. It probably forced kids to grow up and be independent. This book also explores the dark side of that, like what happens when you're being guided by misguided people.

Alison Stewart: The book is set in a fictional Jersey town, Creamwood, New Jersey. What's Creamwood like?

Tom Perrotta: Creamwood is a blue collar, mostly Italian American suburb, but it is notably all white. Basically, Jimmy's going through a fog of grief in this summer and just living his private life, but there's a public drama that's happening around the racial politics of that particular time and place.

Alison Stewart: Is Creamwood, is there a town you base it on?

Tom Perrotta: Well, I grew up in a town called Garwood. In the same way that Jay Perry isn't me, Creamwood isn't exactly Garwood. I think that's why we write fiction, so that we're not limited by the literal truth of the past.

Alison Stewart: I grew up in Northern New Jersey. I was like, "I bet this might be fill in the blank."

[laughter]

Tom Perrotta: There were a bunch of towns like that.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Tom Perrotta, author of the new novel Ghost Town. It's our May Get Lit with All of It book club selection. To borrow your e-copy and get tickets to the May 27 event, head to wnyc.org/getlit. What is going on with young Jimmy Perrini when we first meet him in the novel?

Tom Perrotta: Well, Jimmy begins by saying, "We used to be a normal family. Then something happened and we got weird." The thing that begins this weird journey is the death of his mother.

Alison Stewart: Let's read a little bit from the book. That would be great for people to hear that.

Tom Perrotta: This is Jimmy on the last night, that his life is still normal. He was playing baseball on the night she died. No one had suggested that he might want to stay home that evening, keep her company, say what needed to be said. On the contrary, both his parents had encouraged him to go to the game, to be a normal kid, to keep on living his life, so that was what he did. He put on his uniform, wolfed down a pork roll and cheese sandwich and told his father he was heading to the ballpark.

"I'm sorry I can't be there," his father said. "It's okay," Jimmy told him. His father grunted like it wasn't okay, but there was nothing anyone could do about it. He made a quick adjustment to the brim of Jimmy's cap and patted him twice on the shoulder. That was about as physical as they ever got with each other. "Good luck," he said. "I'll expect a full report."

Jimmy hesitated at the door, or at least that was how he preferred to remember it. Maybe he had a premonition, or maybe he just felt guilty heading out to play a game while the rest of his family had to stay behind in a house that smelled like Glade air freshener and something else, the thing that the Glade couldn't quite manage to hide. "How's she doing," Jimmy asked." Okay," his father said. "It's been a long day." That must have been good enough for Jimmy, because he left without saying goodbye and missed his chance forever.

Alison Stewart: That was Tom Perrotta reading from his new book, Ghost Town. Jimmy's grieving. The family is grieving. I'm interested in what you wanted to explore about the way an 8th grader would grieve.

Tom Perrotta: Yes, well, I think nobody tells him how to grieve. He's not like he's going to therapy. Basically, he's just left to his own devices. I think the first way that the grief manifests itself is that he can't quite connect with his old friends. They're still living their normal life. They're untouched by grief. That's why he ends up, I think, finding his way to an older burnout named Eddie who drives around at night, and they just listen to music and get high.

Then this girl Olivia, whose dad has died and she's very smart, she's the high school valedictorian. I think she sees in him a kindred spirit. There's almost this secret community of people who are kind of stuck in their loneliness and their own grief, and they become Jimmy's companions through this summer. I think they're doing their best. I think they're just people who recognize each other's pain.

Alison Stewart: A Ouija board comes into the equation. First of all, have you ever used one?

Tom Perrotta: Yes, I did.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: I think everybody who grew up in the '70s used one.

Tom Perrotta: Oh, man, I got so spooked.

Alison Stewart: Someone else I know said that they would never touch one again after using it.

Tom Perrotta: I have never touched one again. I ordered one from that era just to have while I was writing this book so I could look at it, and somebody was like, "Let's do it." I'm like, "You go right ahead." [laughs]

Alison Stewart: You just had it to look at, to get the vibe.

Tom Perrotta: I just wanted to make sure that I was describing it properly. I remember that sense of the pointer sliding around with nobody seeming to be willing it. Then you've got the suspense of the message being spelled out from the great beyond. Look, I was probably 12, and when I walked home that night, I was as scared as I've ever been.

Alison Stewart: Are you someone who believes in the supernatural?

Tom Perrotta: I think there are things beyond our rational awareness. I think some of it we imagine, some of it we dream, some of it we probably walk through without even noticing. I think something like the Ouija board just opens you up to those possibilities in a way that normal life doesn't.

Alison Stewart: We're talking to Tom Perrotta, author of the new novel Ghost Town. It's our May Get Lit with All of It book club selection. To borrow your e-copy and get tickets to our May 27th, head to wnyc.org/getlit. We also meet Jimmy as an adult. He's going by Jay Perry. He's become successful as a writer. How did you want Jay to be different from Jimmy?

Tom Perrotta: I think that is partly what the book explains. How do we get from this boy with the Ouija board to this man who is a successful writer, both as a literary novelist and then much later as a commercial novelist and a creator of an animated kids' TV series? I think that for Jay, his life has gone off on a very different trajectory. This summer is what that he's telling about when he was 13 is the summer that explains that trajectory. I think the whole book is meant to tell you how Jimmy became Jay, and how by telling Jimmy's story, Jay can see himself as a whole person rather than a fragmented person.

Alison Stewart: It's interesting because it goes back between Jimmy and Jay. What was interesting for you as a writer to write about the same person at different points in their lives?

Tom Perrotta: I think if you live long enough, like Jay is remembering back 50 years, and when you have that much past, I think there's just a mystery of, like, "How did I become who I am, and can I even remember the person that I was?" This is an extreme case because what happened to Jimmy was so traumatic that Jay has cordoned it off and said, "I don't go there. I don't think about that." As a result of this invitation to return home, he has to do that. That leads to the telling of the story and I think to some sense of discovery and compassion for the boy that he was and everything that he went through. There's a kind of a healing for Jay, I think.

Alison Stewart: We always ask our Get Lit authors if there are any Easter eggs in the book or a section of the book you want our readers to pay attention to, or maybe a section of the book that was difficult for you to write and you soldiered through.

Tom Perrotta: Well, the Easter eggs, I think, are in the descriptions of Jay's work. You mentioned that there was some autofictional element, but it's autofiction in a comic funhouse mirror. Jay is not Tom Perrotta. Some of his work has strange echoes of Tom Perotta's work. I think if you know my work, if you know Little Children and The Leftovers and Bad Haircut, you will have a maybe a slightly deeper appreciation for some of Jay's literary works that are described.

Alison Stewart: My guest has been Tom Perrotta. He's the author of the brand new novel Ghost Town. It's our May Get Lit with All of It book club selection. It is excellent, by the way. To borrow your e-copy and get tickets to the May 27th event, head to wnyc.org/getlit it. We'll see you on May 27th.

Tom Perrotta: I'm really looking forward to it. Thank you so much.

Copyright © 2026 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of programming is the audio record.