The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrota

Tom Perrotta is best known for depiction middle-class life and consuetudes, mainly on the strength of two films made from his books – the  Little Children and the Election. The Abstinence Teacher comes billed as another “scathing” satire, this time about the result of the religious right in American education.
The Abstinence Teacher is not a sequel to Little Children, his previous novel, which was made into an Oscar-nominated film by Todd Field, but it’s a logical follow-up to Perrotta’s investigation of the culture conflicts as they play out with surprising brutality in parks and schools. Little Children introduced two adulterers who conduct an affair as their hometown panics over the return of a sex offender. The Abstinence Teacher further affects the mix by introducing evangelical Christianity and its effects on a similar community.
Ruth Ramsay is a sex education teacher in Stonewood Heights, a town located in some northeastern state that isn’t Massachusetts. She’s known for her cheerfully frank classroom discussions, but when one student expresses disgust over oral sex, Ruth randomly replies: “Some people enjoy it.” This is an inaccuracy in a town where the local evangelical church is growing in size and volume. In the uproar that follows, Ruth is disgusted to be forced to start teaching a new curriculum centred only on abstinence.
Tim Mason, is one of the Tabernacle’s shining lights. A divorced former rock bassist with a serious alcohol and drug problem, he was brought into the church by a friend and has flourished beyond his wildest imaginings. He’s clean and sober, remarried to fellow churchgoer Carrie, and, best of all, coaches a football team that includes Abby, his daughter from his first marriage.
Perrotta’s greatest weapon is irony, and he waves it with facility and wittiness. In spite of fealty to their respective belief systems, neither Ruth nor Tim is fullfilled with their lives. Ruth the sex-ed teacher is celibate and not by alternative. Religious Tim, having abandoned drinking, drugs, is remarried to “the ideal Christian wife—modest, affectionate, sincerely devoted to his happiness,” but his marriage is growing strained, hazarded by daydreams about his ex.
Perrotta stacks on more ironic developments: Ruth’s daughters suddenly want to go to church, while Tim’s daughter seems most worried with the material world, whether it’s her iPod or The Apprentice (Donald Trump is her horrifying choice for an essay on “The Man I Most Admire”). Whatever your beliefs, Perrotta indicates, life is “hard,” and you simply don’t have all the answers, even if you like to think you do.
What also makes The Abstinence Teacher amazing is that Perrotta the satirist honestly assesses why people might turn to organized religion. Tim has explained his world view: “The communities in which he’d claimed membership were disappointingly narrow and homogenous compared to this one. The punks and the Deadheads were overwhelmingly white, suburban and young. … Not like here, where you saw grandmothers and little kids, people in wheelchairs, whole families, interracial couples, immigrants who barely spoke a word of English, college teachers, 12 steppers, cancer patients who’d lost their hair, lonely people.”
Tom Perrotta has the special talent to skewer his character’s instabilities and faults even as he has kindness on their difficulty in life. In The Abstinence Teacher, Perrotta once again displays his natural voice as a writer. Instead of a sharp-tongued comedy, this is an unexpectedly serious and humane look at a lonely woman and a searching man. Do they fall in love? Well, possibly. And it’s that “possibly” that makes it interesting.

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