I LOVED The Abstinence Teacher, by Tom Perrotta. I first heard about it sometime in October, after finally seeing Little Children sometime in the summer.
There were so many times this book made me laugh aloud at the sheer ridiculous of the human situation, and just as many times I cringed in sympathetic embarrassment. And there are passages I marked down, but they all seem awfully risque for this blog. So you will just have to trust me, and hopefully go read it yourself.
I haven't read many reviews of this book besides Kellogg's, which I cited above and had forgotten by the time I started reading. But somehow I just decided everyone would like this book and was a big chagrined when I updated my books on Facebook and discovered that lots of other people were underwhelmed.
Anyway, I haven't said too much about the book yet. It's a culture clash b/t an emerging megachurch and the New England social liberalism embodied by sex ed teacher Ruth Ramsey. And while Ruth works to be a warrior and yet not entirely alienate her tween daughters, the clash is best exemplified by her foil Tim, the ex-addict rocker who found salvation in Jesus and in coaching her daughter's soccer team.
You really root for Ruth and Tim. At least I did. And while I, the former sex ed counselor, found myself quite clearly on one side of the issues, I still felt that Perrotta was both sympathetic and skewering on all sides. For a satirist, he's so nice. (Maybe a little like Jane Austen?) Anyway, I've gushed verbally and in e-mails to so many people in the past week that now I find myself all gushed out. Sigh. So read it for yourself, and decide for yourself. Making your own decisions, after all, might be the moral of The Abstinence Teacher.
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