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Letter to the editor

Carnal courses and 'The Abstinence Teacher'

Author Tom Perrotta tackles the passions of abstinence education, but with rather tame satire.

By Philip Booth, Special to the Times
Published November 18, 2007

The Abstinence Teacher
By Tom Perrotta
St. Martin's Press, 336 pages, $24.95 

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Tom Perrotta knows a thing or two about tapping deep into contemporary American suburbia, land of harried soccer moms and smug breadwinners, the story-rich turf that he has practically staked out as his own piece of authorial terrain.

For evidence, turn to the sharp, bitingly funny Election, the alternately smoldering and sobering Little Children, and the first-rate film adaptations of both novels.

A century from now, historians hoping to get a handle on the tenor of life at the turn of the 21st century in these United States could do far worse than to study those books or movies; Perrotta's 1997 debut novel, The Wishbones, or the semi-autobiographical Joe College would do, too (and, beyond Perrotta, Jonathan Franzen would be a great choice).

The battle over sex education, the subject of Perrotta's foray into the McMansions, high schools, youth soccer fields and supersized evangelical churches of The Abstinence Teacher, seems as if it could be the gift that keeps on giving. The controversy won't go away, as demonstrated by regularly occurring flareups over the issue, from school districts throughout the country to the Barack Obama campaign.

The novel's setup and opening scenes are promising. Stonewood Heights, an upper-middle-class suburb in the Northeast, is in a ruckus. The reason: Ruth Ramsey, a divorced single mother who teaches health at the local high school, has revealed in class that "people enjoy" a certain sexual practice. The evangelical Pastor Dennis and the congregation of the Tabernacle Church pounce on that utterance, taking aim at the teacher and the school board.

The upshot: A new abstinence-promoting curriculum is instituted. It kicks off with a schoolwide assembly on "Saying Yes to Saying No," featuring an unusually attractive guest speaker who dishes the downside of promiscuity and the upside of what she imagines she'll experience during her honeymoon: "JoAnn Marlow had somehow pulled off the neat feat of seeming sexy and puritanical at the same time. . . of making abstinence seem steamy andadventurous, a right-wing American variation on Tantric sex." It's one of the novel's funniest and most carefully observed sequences.

Ruth, as fate and the rules of fiction would have it, finds herself drawn to her polar opposite, Tim Mason, a married, churchgoing, recovering alcoholic and former stoner musician who also coaches girls' soccer.

Enter crisis No. 2: Ruth's daughter, who plays on Tim's team, joins her coach in an after-game prayer. Mom goes ballistic, lawsuits are threatened and . . . romantic sparks fly.

The subject of The Abstinence Teacher seems ripe for Perrotta's picking. And yet the novel, despite several expertly rendered scenes and at least one quite sympathetic character, is neither as funny nor as knowing as the writer's previous works.

Could it be that Perrotta, a lapsed Catholic who has said he researched evangelical Christianity by dropping in on church services, reading the Bible and attending a Promise Keepers rally, nevertheless fails to get much closer than a bird's-eye view of the culture? Despite several attempts, he doesn't go deep enough inside his characters.

Still, there are moments that ring true, including a passage detailing Tim's initial attraction to his church: "For as long as he could remember, Tim had been drawn to this feeling of community; it was something he'd sought, at very different points in his life, from both punk rock and the Grateful Dead, and in each case, for a little while, he'd found what he was looking for. But it hadn't lasted, and . . . the communities in which he'd claimed membership were disappointingly narrow and homogeneous compared to this one."

At any rate, those on the Christian right - or middle, or left - would have to stretch to find Perrotta guilty of going on the attack; the novelist largely strains, sometimes transparently so, to treat characters fairly.

Maybe that's why the story lacks pizazz: This time out, the writer simply is less willing to go for the jugular. Did he repress his urges for the sake of balance and fair-mindedness? Not always such a good idea, in fiction.

Philip Booth writes about arts and entertainment for the St. Petersburg Times and other publications. He has a blog at www.scribelife.blogspot.com.

[Last modified November 15, 2007, 16:34:52]