Book Report: The Abstinence Teacher

I recently read The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta. After picking it up and putting it back on the shelf at the library three different times I finally decided I should just check it out already. My hesitations included many of my usual issues: I'm not really into the adult book thing (swearing even in print just isn't for me) and judging by the title its probably gonna have a lot to do with sex. But I started it, and I actually liked it. There is something to being able to wrap yourself up in other people's messy lives and then being able to shut the book and come back to reality. In short, it's about a divorced sex ed teacher who finds herself forced into teaching an abstinence only curriculum even though she doesn't agree with it. I was a little shocked to find so much new-age religion in it, but I guess I should have seen that coming. My one complaint is that I found the ending kind of lacking. With so much sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll throughout the book, I had expected a re-arranging of the cosmos kind of ending and that it was not.