Rent: The Abstinence Teacher

By Tom Perrotta

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About The Abstinence Teacher - 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.

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.









The Abstinence Teacher Reviews by BookSwim Members




written by sarrahrocks on 02/27/2008
Great book - fast read. Thought it could've been a 5 star book without all the Health Teacher part... it really didn't serve a purpose. The whole, "praying" storyline was the most captivating.

I will defiantly read more by this author.
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written by crispin14 on 02/07/2008
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written by ktourdot on 01/09/2008
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User Rating
Published10/16/2007
Similar Subjects Literature & Fiction
PublisherSt. Martin's Press

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