By Meredith McGroarty

For 15 years, Tom Perrotta has been detachedly documenting the semi-transgressive sex lives of mildly unhappy suburbanites—garden-variety adulterers and teacher-student lovers among them. But in his new book, The Abstinence Teacher, Perrotta steps down from his vantage point to guide us through a suburbia in which religion collides with education and all sex acts are up for public scrutiny.

The titular character of the book is Ruth Ramsey, a sex ed teacher at a suburban high school who, following an uproar by some local religious fanatics, has been forced to teach an abstinence-only curriculum. Her foil is Tim Mason, the born-again coach of her daughter’s soccer team who is intermittently the object of her ire and attraction.

Perrotta has always been a master of letting his characters speak for themselves with very little narrative exposition—physical descriptions, for example, are used sparingly—but one is quite aware of the man behind the curtain here. Ruth’s thoughts, feelings and arguments ring much more strongly (and true) than Tim’s, and there’s no question as to which side of the sex ed debate the author is on.

In some parts, this style gets a bit tedious. “She was doing what any good teacher did,” Perrotta writes, “leading her students into the light, opening them up to new ways of thinking, giving them the vital information they needed to live their lives in the most rewarding way possible—and in doing so, she had earned more than her fair share of respect and affection from the kids who passed through her classroom and some measure of gratitude from the community as a whole.” Read to the end of that sentence without your mind drifting.

But what could come off as a preachy novel about the crisis of religion in the classroom is saved by Tim, a former drug addict and all-around irresponsible person before Jesus helped him kick the habit and pull his life together. Tim is a hardliner on his religious beliefs, but Perrotta skillfully turns him into a believable character whose choices are more personal than dogmatic and whose opinions on religion are conflicted. While Ruth may come off as the more forceful character, Perrotta is, as always, happy to give the other guy a chance.

In his previous books, Perrotta’s characters were mostly held to themselves (or, occasionally, their spouses) for judgment about their moral choices. But in The Abstinence Teacher, there is a distinct and growing group judging and punishing the acts that take place behind closed doors. The Christian Right has arrived, and it’s taking no prisoners.  

While the book’s title implies that the war over sexuality is taking place in the classroom, Perrotta knows better. In the war for our children’s hearts and minds, are not adults the first target? This point is expressed most overtly in a scene in which several teachers accused of crossing the line with their students are rounded up, Breakfast Club-style, for a Saturday morning seminar in which they are forced by a young virginity crusader to disavow their own previous sexual experiences. For the religious right, it’s not enough for teachers to talk the talk.

But despite the title of his book and the main occupation of its protagonist, Perrotta portrays the act itself as he always has—a banal necessity engaged in out of loneliness or necessity or plain old curiosity. When one character flashes back to her first sexual experience, it is brief and even a bit boring. And behind the curtain, Perrotta seems to suggest, “All that fuss over this?”