book review
Title: The Leftovers
Author: Tom Perrotta
# of Pages: 368
Summary (from amazon.com): Author Tom Perrotta is a master at exposing the quiet desperation behind America’s suburban sheen. In The Leftovers he explores what would happen if The Rapture actually took place and millions of people just disappeared from the earth. How would normal people respond? Perrotta’s characters show a variety of coping techniques, including indifference, avoidance, depression, freaking out, and the joining of cults. Despite the exceptional circumstances, it’s really not unlike how people respond to more minor incidents in their lives (excepting cults). The result is a novel that’s a slow burn yet strangely compelling, one that leaves the reader pondering the story long after it’s over. In vivid and occasionally satiric prose, he takes a bizarre and abnormal event--the Rapture--and imagines how normal people would deal with being left behind.
Opinion: The general idea behind this book is what got me interested in the first place - the seemingly arbitrary 'rapture' of people, and how those who were left behind cope and go on with their lives. I loved the perspectives in this story - each family member's own experiences in dealing with what happened, along with the perspectives at times of the people they interact with along the way. I also found some of the side stories of how the society attempted to deal with this 'rapture' really interesting - the emergence of fanatic religious organizations and what the people in the story turned to as a means of comfort and understanding during the time.
Now Reading: I Totally Meant To Do That by Jane Borden
x-posted to books