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Jul 21, 2012mpfickes rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
Perrotta seems to be chasing John Updike's title as the king of suburban WASP storytelling. He revels in comic depictions of the worried well. He creates a sympathetic character in Ruth Ramsay, a 40-ish high school health teacher struggling to cope with the loneliness of her newly single state after her marriage crumbles. Ruth's solidly secular liberal values are challenged by the specter of her daughter's soccer coach leading the team in spontaneous prayer after a hard-won victory. It's in plot machinations that pit Ruth against the appealing but not quite authentic character of Tim Mason, the coach, that Perrotta stumbles. Tim's struggles to remain faithful to the precepts of his newfound fundamentalist church, The Living Tabernacle, do not resonate. Francine Prose's novel A Changed Man deals much more successfully with the grappling of a lost soul. Perrotta's characters and their dilemmas just come off as slight