Title: The Abstinence Teacher
Author: Tom Perrotta
Ruth Ramsey is a divorced fortysomething, plodding along in life, teaching sex education in a New England public school when she gets blindsided by the religious right wing. After admitting that "some people seem to enjoy oral sex," a brouhaha of epic proportions ensues in her town, resulting in the school board adopting a curriculum based on abstience. Ruth, a die-hard atheist whose mantra has been "condoms, condoms, condoms" has a hard time swallowing her pride, and her new teaching responsibilities. She soon learns that her daughter's soccer coach, Tim, is one of those crazy Christians. He's a born-again who turned to God to try to stay sober. Despite their differences, Tim and Ruth seem strangely drawn to each other.
Perrotta, the author of Election and Little Children, is a satirist. Both Ruth and Tim have been painted with fairly broad strokes. I almost felt like I was watching Crossfire, or Mary Matalin and James Carville (see, it works for them!). His overall message seems to be that being a closed-minded atheist is as bad as being a blind follower of Christianity. As if we didn't know that already. Perrotta, as I already knew, is a master at building sexual tension, so the book was entertaining for that aspect alone. And he's really, really funny. At one point, Ruth says that "Pleasure is good, shame is bad, and knowledge is power" and I guess that her statement applies to Perrotta's novel too.
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