Thoughts on The Abstinence Teacher

I picked up The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta because I have enjoyed two of his other books: The Wishbones and Little Children. Tom Perrotta's prose style and subject matter has a lot in common with Nick Hornby, which was the first thing that drew me to his books. While his books are simply enjoyable to read, the complexity of flawed and often oblivious characters is what invites further analysis. It is his characters that make his fiction more than another supermarket-shelf paperback. It is his characters that allow me to relate to the stories. It is his characters that drive the stories and not the other way around. Certainly, events are happening, but Perrotta's characters simply are experiencing consequences for actions, whether the consequences are right or wrong or the actions are right or wrong is irrelevant. What takes place leads to one of my favorite words: verisimilitude. I completely believe the events and the characters.

The Abstinence Teacher is told from two perspectives: Ruth Ramsey, a sex education and health teacher who finds herself in a spot of trouble because of her "liberal" views in an increasingly Evangelical suburbia, and Tim Mason, a recovered-drug-addict-musician become born again Christian become soccer coach who still doesn't understand everything about his new-found faith. The dueling perspectives become enmeshed in one another, and the reader finds throughout the story that these two characters are more similar than the characters believe at first glance. Their stories intersect when Ruth meets Tim, her daughter's soccer coach, and shortly thereafter Tim leads the soccer team in a prayer after a match. Ruth is already embittered by the Christian movement taking place in her town because she is being forced out of her job due to her candidness as well as her passion for cold hard facts when it comes to human sexuality. She begins to take action against Tim, as the soccer league is a local government-supported entity. Both characters wrestle with their new stations in life. The resolution is mostly missing and the reader must draw his or her own conclusion, so if not knowing all the answers isn't your bag, you might want to skip this one. I found the ending to be perfect. I thought the author has made his point, and I preferred drawing my own conclusion.

I would recommend this book to just about anyone. If you enjoy comedy, satire, drama, and close examinations of the culture that we live in, this book is for you. If you need your stories tied up in a neat package. If having that uncertainty drives you crazy: that would be the only reason I would skip this one.