Author: Tom Perrotta<br />File Type: epub<br />A New York Times Notable Book for 2011 A Washington Post Notable Fiction Book for 2011The New York Times bestseller now in paperbackA thought-provoking engrossing novel about love, connection, and loss from the author of The Abstinence Teacher and Little Children What if your life was upended in an instant? What if your spouse or your child disappeared right in front of your eyes? Was it the Rapture or something even more difficult to explain? How would you rebuild your life in the wake of such a devastating event? These are the questions confronting the bewildered citizens of Mapleton, a formerly comfortable suburban community that lost over a hundred people in the Sudden Departure. Kevin Garvey, the new mayor, wants to move forward, to bring a sense of renewed hope and purpose to his traumatized neighbors, even as his own family disintegrates. His wife, Laurie, has left him to enlist in the Guilty Remnant, a homegrown cult whose members take a vow of silence but haunt the towns streets as living reminders of Gods judgment. His son, Tom, is gone, too, dropping out of college to follow a crooked prophet who calls himself Holy Wayne. Only his teenaged daughter, Jill, remains, and shes definitely not the sweet A student she used to be. Through the prism of a single family, Perrotta illuminates a familiar America made strange by grief and apocalyptic anxiety. The Leftovers is a powerful and deeply moving book about regular people struggling to hold onto a belief in their futures.Amazon.com ReviewAmazon Best Books of the Month, August 2011 Author Tom Perrotta is a master at exposing the quiet desperation behind Americas 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? Perrottas characters show a variety of coping techniques, including indifference, avoidance, depression, freaking out, and the joining of cults. Despite the exceptional circumstances, its really not unlike how people respond to more minor incidents in their lives (excepting cults). The result is a novel thats a slow burn yet strangely compelling, one that leaves the reader pondering the story long after its 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. --Chris SchluepReviewThe Leftovers is, simply put, the best Twilight Zone episode you never saw.--Stephen King, New York Times Book Review[Perrottas] most mature, absorbing novel, one that confirms his development from a funnyman to a daring chronicler of our most profound anxieties and human desires...Leavened with humor and tinged with creepiness, this insightful novel draws us into some very dark corners of the human psyche.--Washington Post[Perrottas] most ambitious book to date....The premise is as simple as it is startling (certainly for the characters involved). The novel is filled with those who have changed their lives radically or discovered something crucial about themselves, as radical upheaval generates a variety of coping mechanisms. Though the tone is more comic than tragic, it is mainly empathic, never drawing a distinction between good and bad characters, but recognizing all as merely humanordinary people dealing with an extraordinary situation. Kirkus Reviews (starred)Ever since Little Children, Tom Perrotta has been a master chronicler of suburban ennui, but he takes things to a new level with his wry, insightful, unputdownable novel The Leftovers...Profoundly entertaining...The Leftovers brims with joy, hilarity, tenderness and hope.--Marie ClaireAn engrossing read.--PeopleThe Leftovers is sort of an Our Town for End Times. Tom Perrotta, our Balzac of the burbs, has come up with a wild premise for his engaging, entertaining new novel. Suddenly, a huge number of people vanish from this earth. The only explanation is that The Rapture has occurredHe narrows his affectionate and gently satiric focus to the middle-American village of Mapleton and shows us a bunch of folks trying to get on with their...