I am a huge fan of Tom Perrotta. This story is not an edge of your chair suspense thriller or mystery. What makes his stories so interesting to me is that his characters are ordinary or ordinarily dysfunctional and could be anyone you know. They could be your neighbors, your kid's school teacher, your pastor, the anonymous guy from the grocery store. I really enjoyed Tom's story, Little Children, but I enjoyed this one more. Little Children was made into a stellar movie starring Kate Winslet. I hope the movie exec's make this one into a movie as well. He has an eloquent way of writing so that I can relate to all the character's whether our lives are dramatically different or similar in some ways. If you have not read a Tom Perrotta book I recommend that you do so- today.
Synopsis (from barnesandnoble.com): THE ABSTINENCE TEACHER, set in a suburban world of soccer teams, carpools and the tension between those who would inject faith into their children's lives and those who would not, is a new novel from the bestselling author of LITTLE CHILDREN.
Midway through Tom Perrotta's sixth novel, The Abstinence Teacher, Ruth Ramsey, a divorced mother of two, reluctantly puts on lipstick and jeans to meet with Tim Mason, her youngest daughter's soccer coach and a recently remarried father of one, and even more reluctantly admits to herself that she secretly wishes she were a heroine in one of those "corny 'opposites attract' narratives" that were so appealing to writers of sitcoms and romantic comedies:
The formula was simple: you brought together a man and a woman who held wildly divergent world views -- an idealistic doctor, say, and an ambulance-chasing lawyer -- and waited for them to realize that their witty intellectual combat was nothing more than a smoke screen, kicked up to conceal the inconvenient and increasingly obvious fact that they were desperate to hop into bed together.
The formula was simple: you brought together a man and a woman who held wildly divergent world views -- an idealistic doctor, say, and an ambulance-chasing lawyer -- and waited for them to realize that their witty intellectual combat was nothing more than a smoke screen, kicked up to conceal the inconvenient and increasingly obvious fact that they were desperate to hop into bed together.
In case I haven't made myself clear- I think Tom Perrotta is a genius writer. I do hope this book gets a sequel. I would like to know where the characters eventually end up.
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