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The Abstinence Teacher

By Tom Perrotta

(18)

| Hardcover | 9780312358334

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Book Description

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.

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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.

Critics

  • Just say no

    The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta 358pp, Fourth Estate, £12.99 Tom Perrotta is best known for skewering American middle-class suburbia, mainly on the strength of two films made from his books - the uneven Little Children and the brilliant Electi ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

  • Abstinence Teacher

    This understated, relevant read from the champion of stateside suburbia brings fresh insight to the battle between the two greatest forces in contemporary American society. When Ruth Ramsey, a divorced sex education teacher, makes a throwaway comment ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Fri, 24 Sep 2010

1 Review

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  • not bad, but not good either. I could have read something much much better and more entertaining if it weren't for the book club. (and I was the one who nominated this. duh...)

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    Ashley H. said on Apr 28, 2009 | Add your feedback

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9780312358334 Hardcover $24.95 $19.96 bn.com
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