The Abstinence Teacher 
Tom Perrotta (Fourth Estate)

This is one of those ‘it could only happen in America’ kind of books.

Ruth Ramsey is a Sex Ed teacher in an American high school, beloved by her students because she ‘tells it to them straight’.

Everything seems to be going along fine when one day Ruth is side-swiped by a student with a question about oral sex.

Before she knows it, Ruth is up before the school board and the question of abstinence has been raised.

The ‘abstinence teacher’ of the title is brought into the school to ensure that the directives of a local born-again church are put to the students. Much bizarre hilarity ensues.

The church is a somewhat sinister organisation that seems to have been slowly growing and taking over the more liberal sectors of Ruth’s town.

The Abstinence Teacher is as much about the rapid, and somewhat scary, growth of right-wing fundamental Christianity in the US as it is about Ruth and her fight to continue to ‘tell it straight’ to her students.

An unswerving belief in following the bible, ‘Intelligent Design’ and a morality that’s as restrictive as many fundamentalist Muslim societies, runs through the novel.

Unfortunately, Perrotta’s prose is a little clunky in places and the plot takes a long time to warm up. However, as an insight into just what’s going on in the good ole’ US of A, it’s worth a read.

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