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The Leftovers
Paperback, 355 pages, St Martins Pr, List Price: $14.99 | purchase
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Book Summary
When a bizarre phenomenon causes the cataclysmic disappearances of numerous people all over the world, Kevin Garvey, the new mayor of a once-comfortable suburban community, struggles to help his neighbors heal while enduring the fanatical religious conversions of his wife and son.
Awards and Recognition
4 weeks on NPR Hardcover Fiction Bestseller List
Genres:
This book is about:
- Life change events,
- Psychological fiction,
- Fiction
NPR stories about The Leftovers
Author Interviews
Examining 'The Leftovers,' After The Rapture
May 25, 2012 What if the rapture actually occurred? That's the plot of Tom Perrotta's novel The Leftovers, which examines the aftermath of an unexplained rapturelike event in which millions of people around the globe inexplicably disappear into thin air.
New In Paperback
Innovation: 'Machu Picchu', Homesteading And 'Johnny Appleseed'
Tom Perrotta's spiritual fantasy looks at those left behind by a Rapture-like event that has vaporized their friends and family. NPR book critic Maureen Corrigan listed it as one of the best books of 2012, saying: "Perrotta's characters must cope with the empty chairs at the family table, as well as the shame of their own loser status. Although The Leftovers displays the wry sensibility of Perrotta's best-known suburban social novel, Little Children, like that predecessor,... more
Best Books Of 2011
Year-End Fiction Wrap-Up: The 10 Best Novels Of 2011
Another compelling spiritual fantasy, of sorts, was brought out this year by Tom Perrotta: The Leftovers looks at some folks left behind after a Rapture-like event has spontaneously vaporized their (perhaps more fortunate) friends and family members. Perrotta's characters must cope with the empty chairs at the family table, as well as with the shame of their own loser status. Although The Leftovers displays the wry sensibility of Perrotta's best-known suburban social novel,... more
Author Interviews
After The Rapture, Who Are 'The Leftovers'?
August 25, 2011 What if the rapture actually occurred? That's the plot of Tom Perrotta's new novel The Leftovers, which examines the aftermath of an unexplained rapturelike event in which millions of people around the globe inexplicably disappear into thin air.
Note: Book excerpts are provided by the publisher and may contain language some find offensive.
Excerpt: 'The Leftovers'
Laurie Garvey hadn't been raised to believe in the Rapture. She hadn't been raised to believe in much of anything, except the foolishness of belief itself.
We're agnostics, she used to tell her kids, back when they were little and needed a way to define themselves to their Catholic and Jewish and Unitarian friends. We don't know if there's a God, and nobody else does, either. They might say they do, but they really don't.
The first time she'd heard about the Rapture, she was a freshman in college, taking a class called Intro to World Religions. The phenomenon the professor described seemed like a joke to her, hordes of Christians floating out of their clothes, rising up through the roofs of their houses and cars to meet Jesus in the sky, everyone else standing around with their mouths hanging open, wondering where all the good people had gone. The theology remained murky to her, even after she read the section on "Premillenial Dispensationalism" in her textbook, all that mumbo jumbo about Armageddon and the Antichrist and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It felt like religious kitsch, as tacky as a black velvet painting, the kind of fantasy that appealed to people who ate too much fried food, spanked their kids, and had no problem with the theory that their loving God invented AIDS to punish the gays. Every once in a while, in the years that followed, she'd spot someone reading one of the Left Behind books in an airport or on a train, and feel a twinge of pity, and even a little bit of tenderness, for the poor sucker who had nothing better to read, and nothing else to do, except sit around dreaming about the end of the world.
And then it happened. The biblical prophecy came true, or at least partly true. People disappeared, millions of them at the same time, all over the world. This wasn't some ancient rumor—a dead man coming back to life during the Roman Empire—or a dusty homegrown legend, Joseph Smith unearthing golden tablets in upstate New York, conversing with an angel. This was real. The Rapture happened in her own hometown, to her best friend's daughter, among others, while Laurie herself was in the house. God's intrusion into her life couldn't have been any clearer if He'd addressed her from a burning azalea.
Excerpted from The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta. Copyright 2011 by Tom Perrotta. Published by St. Martin's Press. All rights reserved.
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