The Abstinence Teacher | Tom Perrotta | If you want to think...

The Abstinence Teacher | Tom Perrotta | A satisfying read with nice descriptions

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The Abstinence Tea...

	The Abstinence Teacher Tom Perrotta St. Martin's Press, 2007 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 103 reviews view larger image
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Stonewood Heights is the perfect place to raise kids. It?s got the proverbial good schools, solid values and a healthy real estate market. It?s the kind of place where parents are involved in their children?s lives, where no opportunity for enrichment goes unexplored.

Ruth Ramsey is the human sexuality teacher at the local high school. She believes that ?pleasure is good, shame is bad, and knowledge is power.? Ruth?s younger daughter?s soccer coach is Tim Mason, a former stoner and rocker whose response to hitting rock bottom was to reach out and be saved. Tim belongs to The Tabernacle, an evangelical Christian church that doesn?t approve of Ruth?s style of teaching. And Ruth in turn doesn?t applaud The Tabernacle?s mission to take its message outside its doors. Adversaries in a small-town culture war, Ruth and Tim instinctively mistrust each other. But when a controversy on the soccer field pushes the two of them to actually talk to each other, they are forced to take each other at something other than face value.

The Abstinence Teacher exposes the powerful emotions that run beneath the surface of modern American family life and explores the complex spiritual and sexual lives of ordinary people. Elegantly written, it is characterized by the distinctive mix of satire and compassion that have animated Perrotta?s previous novels.

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If you want to think...

Many other reviewers have described the plot of this book better than I ever could. However, I can share with you my impressions. The "Abstinence Teacher" is a complex, nuanced book that avoids platitudes. The characters don't wear white and black hats --- everyone sports gray chapeaux. You'll bring your own prejudices along for the read, and you're likely to take away that which matches your own inclinations. An excellent, thought-provoking book.

A satisfying read with nice descriptions

I wasn't expecting too much from this book but it was a pleasant surprise. The plot is interesting, although it is not totally seamless in the way it unwinds. Nevertheless, the characters are interesting and the protagonist has a good voice. It has some unexpected aspects to it that keep the reading flowing forward.

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Fails to bridge the cultural divide

I was drawn to this story by the reviews, both on the back cover and on Amazon. I was led to believe that the author portrays two people on opposite sides of America's culture wars in an impartial way. It is a difficult feat for an author to get into the skin of people with radically different viewpoints. Unfortunately Tom Perotta does not succeed in this quest. He fully imagines the political and religious attitudes of one character, but misses on the other. I suspect that the author himself falls distinctly to one side of the cultural divide. He makes a valiant effort, but he does not reach across that divide with impartiality. As a result, almost half of the characters in the story are offensive, pitiful, or both. The old writer's rule is still true: write what you know. This author did some research, according to his notes, but he could not or would not flesh out some of his people. That left me dissatisfied.

The writer does a good job creating sympathetic and believable persons out of the two main characters. He sets up an amusing and entertaining plot. There is real potential for hilarity and truth telling, but alas, the narrative does not rise to that level. Although a relationship between the two was an outlandish conceit, I was looking forward to their interaction. When they do finally interact, the result was an anticlimax. Some reviewers suggest that the story ended too soon, without exploring the fascinating possibilities of this relationship. That is true, but I was ready to move on to another author.

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Promising effort not fully realized

I heard Perrotta read a chapter from this book on the radio and really enjoyed the excerpt. But, I found that the book didn't quite live up to my expectations. There are lots of threads going on in this book but I don't feel that many of them are followed to a satisfactory conclusion. Perrotta takes on religion, sex education, gay marriage, substance abuse recovery, marriage, parenting, and more, but I don't feel that I got a real sense of resolution on any of the issues. There were some laugh out loud moments, but not enough for me to recommend this to friends. I'll donate my copy to the library.

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