The Leftovers

Books | Fiction / Literary

3.2

(168)

Tom Perrotta

With heart, intelligence and a rare ability to illuminate the struggles inherent in ordinary lives, Tom Perrotta's The Leftovers—now adapted into an HBO series—is a startling, thought-provoking novel about love, connection and loss. What if—whoosh, right now, with no explanation—a number of us simply vanished? Would some of us collapse? Would others of us go on, one foot in front of the other, as we did before the world turned upside down?That's what the bewildered citizens of Mapleton, who lost many of their neighbors, friends and lovers in the event known as the Sudden Departure, have to figure out. Because nothing has been the same since it happened—not marriages, not friendships, not even the relationships between parents and children. Kevin Garvey, Mapleton's new mayor, wants to speed up the healing process, to bring a sense of renewed hope and purpose to his traumatized community. Kevin's own family has fallen apart in the wake of the disaster: his wife, Laurie, has left to join the Guilty Remnant, a homegrown cult whose members take a vow of silence; his son, Tom, is gone, too, dropping out of college to follow a sketchy prophet named Holy Wayne. Only Kevin's teenaged daughter, Jill, remains, and she's definitely not the sweet "A" student she used to be. Kevin wants to help her, but he's distracted by his growing relationship with Nora Durst, a woman who lost her entire family on October 14th and is still reeling from the tragedy, even as she struggles to move beyond it and make a new start.A New York Times Notable Book for 2011A Washington Post Notable Fiction Book for 2011A USA Today 10 Books We Loved Reading in 2011 TitleOne of NPR's 10 Best Novels of 2011

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More Details:

Author

Tom Perrotta

Pages

368

Publisher

St. Martin's Publishing Group

Published Date

2011-08-30

ISBN

1429989130 9781429989138

Ratings

Google: 3

Community ReviewsSee all

"Main reason I couldn’t get passed the first few episodes: if you’re a dog lover this show is not for you. Whoever made this show seems to have something against dogs. "

B M V H

"I REALLY was frustrated with this book.....the ending TOTALLY ticked me off!! Okay...now that I got that off my chest....I was so excited to read this book....the cover was just so cool....the author is one I had read "Little Children" and really liked it.....and who doesn't want to read about 'The Rapture'??? I tried to like the main characters but I felt like I didn't really know them by the end of the book.....they all felt pretty superficial to me and I was basically disappointed in all their storylines and how they ended or should I say left you hanging....NOTHING worse than not finishing a storyline.... As for the ending.......I kept hoping that the last chapter of the book would redeem it by giving me something amazing to sum it all up....Was it really the Rapture or was it some Government conspiracy or aliens zapping people off the face of the earth??? Will any of the main characters reach some point of resolve and happiness in their bleak outlooks on life??? Will it make me forgive Tom Perotta for this waste of 10 hours of my life and be looking forward to his next novel??? I can tell you that the book failed in all those aspects and more for me....it turned out to be one longgggg boring review of people trying to cope with sudden loss of loved ones and what they should do now that it seems that there isn't much left in the world to look forward to. It just NEVER got really exciting at any point in the book....there were many hopeful scenarios where I would think.....FINALLY....something to make my heart beat a little faster or wake me up from this snoze-fest.....then it would just fade into another story line with no climax.....this happened over and over again and then BAM the ending was absolutely a "WTF...is that really it?!?!?!"....I sat there waiting for something more and it was just a bunch of dead air than music to tell me the story was FINISHED...OMG.....I was so frustrated I came home and ranted to my husband all night long about how STUPID and FRUSTRATING the ending was and that I had just lost 10 hours of my life that I could never get back!!! So basically what I'm trying to say is this book left me hanging and bummed because I was really looking forward to a new look at what has been written about many times before and it just wasn't there....Sorry Tom but I tried....but I just couldn't love it or even like it.....it was just ho-hum for me..."