The Book: The Abstinence Teacher, by Tom Perrotta
The Story: From what I can tell, Perrotta’s “thing” is suburbia and this time his issue is religion. The story revolves around the conflict between the sex-ed teacher in the high school and father who is a soccer coach and new believer.
It all kind of comes to a head when the soccer coach decides to say a quick prayer after a soccer game and invites the girls on his team to join him.
From their limited contact, these two characters kind of start to realize that while they don’t feel the same way about religion, that they do actually have a lot in common. An unlikely friendship starts to develop, and then, well… all hell breaks loose again.
What I Thought: This is another case of full on judging the book by its cover. I had had my eye on this book since it came out- the topic seemed relevant and interesting and the cover seriously is pretty beautiful. I saw it at a library sale and snatched it up even though it has those annoying stamps all over it.
I know that this book got quite a bit of bad press, but I thought it was pretty good. I have a thing for “moral dilemma” books if they are done well. I love when the author puts characters in these tough situations and pretty much just makes the squirm out.
This one started off slow, bobbing back and forth between Ruth and Tim- letting us into their lives and into their heads. As the conflict starts to show itself, I really thought that the book picked up and I read the last 100 pages or so in one sitting. It was engaging and thought provoking.
Here is what bugged me: the author clearly has this bias against Christianity and didn’t even allow for any sort of balance. Sure, Tim’s brand of Christianity was crazy. How he acted was crazy. His church? Totally crazy. Perrotta uses that craziness throughout the entire book as the “norm.” Other people in town rally behind Tim. I have a hard time believing that many Christians would rally behind that. I just wish that the author had provided a kind of foil to Tim’s character like he did for Ruth’s. I didn’t come into this book looking for theological truths or anything, but I just walked away feeling like the author had an ax to grind and this is how he decided to do it. It didn’t bug me bad enough to ruin my impression of the book, but it did sit wrong with me.
What made this book good was the writing. I thought that the dialogue was believable, that the prose was smooth, and that we were really allowed to get inside of the heads of these flawed characters. I think it is an intelligent and well thought out book that just ran into issues with pacing and preachiness.
I think, somehow, that this would be a better movie than it was a book. It was even written sort of screenplay-ish. Maybe that is what the author had in mind? I’m not sure.
Conclusion: This book was alright and if you’ve already bought it, go ahead and read it. Otherwise, wait for the movie. It’ll be pretty awesome.