Tom Perrotta is a funny writer, and this is a well-written book. The only problem is that this novel about the culture wars is also a little annoying. I know that, as a comic novel, its characters are supposed to be over-the-top, but do they have to be quite so unbelievable? Just about every character here struck me as a little bit off. "The Abstinence Teacher" is about Ruth, a high school sex ed teacher under pressure from the school board to promote abstinence in her teachings, and Tim, a former addict turned Christian mortgage broker struggling with his inner demons. And can I just say that, here in the midst of a real estate-fueled economic crisis, I have somehow accidentally read two books this year about people who work in real estate? (I wonder if I need to add a Realty tag to this blog.) Luckily, Perrotta's section on this is brief, and he even seems to foreshadow the bursting of the real estate bubble. Well done.
In the end, the worlds of these two gradually collide, and they come to treat each other with tolerance. This is all very uplifting. Of course, one could argue that the only reason they do treat each other with tolerance is that most everyone else in the book is so annoying that Ruth and Tim are the only ones who deserve tolerance. In a world of bombastic caricatures, the relatively grounded Ruth and Tim are quite obviously meant for each other.
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