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Executive Times |
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2008 Book Reviews |
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The
Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta |
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Rating: |
** |
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(Mildly Recommended) |
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Click
on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Ordinary Ruth
Ramsay is the protagonist of Tom Perrotta’s new novel, The
Abstinence Teacher. After years of being the sex ed teacher at a suburban
high school somewhere in the northeast, Ruth is forced to change her
curriculum after the school board listens to the fundamentalist Christian
citizens who want the school to teach abstinence. Sex, religion and culture
wars all in one novel. What should have been engaging to read turned out to
be boring, thanks to Ruth being a not especially appealing character. Not
long into the novel, I found that I didn’t care what happened to her. Here’s
an excerpt, from the end of Chapter 2, pp. 48-50: She
had only one bad memory from those days, but it had stuck with her over the
years, its power undiminished by the passage of time. It happened on a warm
evening near the end of school, a couple of weeks after Paul's cast came off
and he was reclaimed by real life, Missy, and the marching band. Ruth was in
the kitchen, helping her mother clean up after dinner when her father called
from the living room. "Hey,
get a load of this." What
he wanted them to see was the white stretch limo parked in front of the
Carusos'. A small crowd of curious neighbors had gathered around to admire
the vehicle—it was gleaming in the dusk, giving off a soft shimmery luster—some
of them chatting with the uniformed driver, others circling the car, peering
into the windows and kicking the tires, as if they were thinking about buying
one for themselves. "Must
be the prom," Ruth's mother said. Ruth's father was a man who liked to know what
was going on. Whenever an ambulance or fire truck appeared on Peony Road, no
matter what time of day or night, he headed out to investigate, buttonholing
as many bystanders and emergency workers as he could, then returning home
with the bulletin: Mrs.
Rapinksi was short of breath, it was a grease fire in the oven, the old man
felt dizzy. Ruth wasn't surprised to see him putting on
his shoes. "This
oughta be interesting," he said. "Who's
his date?" her mother asked. "Is it that big girl? The baseball
player?" "How
should I know?" Ruth snapped. Her
parents headed outside, unable to resist the glamorous pull of prom night.
Ruth stayed in, staring out the window, wishing she had the courage to return
to the kitchen and continue loading the dishwasher but finding it impossible
to turn away from the spectacle. The
limo driver—he was an older man with a carefully expressionless face—had
just pulled out a handkerchief and begun rubbing at something on the
windshield when the people around him began to clap, as if applauding his
diligence. It took Ruth a moment to realize that Paul and Missy must have
just emerged from the house, though she couldn't see them from where she
stood. Even with her face pressed against the glass, her field of vision only
encompassed the bottom half of the front lawn, where Paul's father and
another man—a burly guy in a windbreaker who must have been Missy's dad—were
kneeling and snapping flash pictures. Onlookers
shouted out jokey-sounding comments that Ruth couldn't quite make out; she
saw her own mother and father laughing on the sidewalk. Finally, she couldn't
take it anymore, the sense of being cut off from the action, of being stuck
in here while it was all happening out there. She
headed for the front door, hesitating for a moment as she took stock of her
unflattering outfit—baggy sweatpants and an old South-side Johnny T-shirt
inherited from her sister—nothing you'd want to be seen wearing in public.
She wondered if there was time to at least grab a jean jacket from her room
or run a brush through her hair, but there wasn't. She stepped onto her porch just
in time to see Paul and Missy making their way toward the limo, where the
driver was waiting, holding the back door open and extending an eloquent
gesture of invitation with his free hand. They stopped by the curb, posing
for one last photo, Paul bulky and imposing in his rented tux, Missy a bit
awkward in a sleeveless orange dress with a poufy skirt, a tight bodice—an
unwieldy corsage had been pinned directly over her left breast—and spaghetti
straps that emphasized the powerful girth of her shoulders. Her blond French
twist seemed strangely luminous, almost iridescent, as she kissed Paul on the
cheek, straightened his bow tie, and then ducked into the car. He was just
about to follow her when he turned suddenly, as if drawn by Ruth's gaze, and
looked straight at her. That moment of eye contact
couldn't have lasted more than a second or two, just long enough for Ruth to
see that he'd gotten a haircut—nothing drastic, just a trim of a couple
inches all around—and to notice his peculiar expression, as if his face had
gotten stuck halfway between a fake smile for the cameras and a mute apology
to her. Or maybe she was imagining the
apology part, because what did he have to apologize for? Ruth wasn't his
girlfriend, never had been. They'd just had some fun, and now it was over.
She had no right to be jealous, no right to wish herself inside the limo in a
pretty dress after having just been applauded by her neighbors, no right to
call out and ask him to reconsider, to remember how he'd stroked her hair and
told her that she was the kind of girl guys wrote love songs about. He held his arms close to his
body and shrugged, as if to say there was nothing he could do. She had the
feeling he was about to say something, but the limo driver stepped in before
he had the chance, placing his hand on Paul's shoulder and guiding him gently
into the car. He was still looking at her as the door slammed shut, his face
baffled and unhappy, then lost behind the tinted window. Satire is tricky writing, and
for some readers, The
Abstinence Teacher will be a real pleasure to read. Others may find the
novel’s characters are too poorly developed to gain empathy or to provide
insight into behavior. Steve
Hopkins, June 20, 2008 |
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Go to Executive Times Archives |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the July 2008 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The Abstinence Teacher.htm For Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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