Book #18 - The Leftovers

I believe I was in college when the Left Behind books were big.  They began with the Rapture - when a chosen number of persons were just taken by God into heaven.  In that series, the rapture is followed by apocalyptic events.  (The above image depicts Matthew 24:40: Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left, one of the scriptural bases for the rapture.)

The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta begins right after a rapture-like event.  Times passes but the end of the world and the anti-christ do not appear.  What would happen in a world like this?  Perrotta takes a good guess.  Cults appear, people mourn, everyone is affected emotionally, but life goes on.  Since there are no break downs in supply chains, things can pretty much continue as normal.

There appears to be no reason in the book why people are taken.  Saintly and sinful people disappear - such as the frat boy who vanishes from his bed on conquest #37, or young innocent children.  This becomes a point of tension.  For example, there is the righteous minister who begins to try and prove that it couldn't have been the rapture because God wouldn't take these kind of people. 

Reflecting on the book, I don't think Perrotta was trying to set up a religious event, but more of a strange event to which people must react.  I guess he could have used a super plague, but that would have left less people asking why, or figuring out how to cope with their losses.  Questions raised consider how to keep morale up in the town, or how to fill the holes on a softball team when the best hitter was taken.

This was a somewhat strange but interesting read, and surprisingly not at all scary or even creepy.