The Leftovers: A Novel

I love the premise, but for the most part nothing happens in this book. There's no resolution either, for the characters or as far as an explanation for why any of it happened in the first place. The ending left me wholly unsatisfied. Also, as an aside, I felt the writing was really sexist on both sides of the gender equation. The male characters were leaders and played sports, while the female characters were overly emotional, mentally unstable, and their merit was based on their physical attributes and ability to procreate and rear children (or at least the desire to do so). Why couldn't a female character have been mayor? Why couldn't a male character have been a stay-at-home dad? It almost got there, with Tom, but then it took a turn at the end and felt completely out of character for him when he does what he does. All in all I was disappointed in this book, but gave it 3 stars because I love the premise.

Good reading. It's unlike any apocalyptic book I have ever read. The lives of the people and how they conduct themselves is interesting. The cults make one wonder how anyone could believe the ideals upon which they are based.

Great concept. However rather than have characters that make the topic thought provoking the characters are given to extremes. They accept things rather than wrestle with things anyone with a conscience would. Very disappointing

Just had to read this book after watching the series. A great story, and it answers so many questions about the TV series. Of course so many more questions are raised too :-). Hopefully Mr. Perrotta will write a sequel!

I picked up The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta after reading a number of his other books. I am not typically a "science-fiction" type of reader but in this case I made an exception after realizing a few pages into the book that it takes place in a sort of alternate reality world. I am glad I stuck with it as I enjoyed the book and found it to be something totally different from the norm. It did have a strong hint also of the Perrotta Christian touch that you find in several of his other books. The story starts with the citizens of Mapleton coming to terms with the fact that many of their brother, sisters, parents, and friends disappeared in an event called the Sudden Departure. The literally disappeared off the face of the earth. The tow is trying to get back to normal under the guidance of their popular , good-looking, and rich mayor Kevin's wife has also left to join a local cult. We learn about Kevin's teenage daughter who lost her best friend and who now is trying to get back to normal and not go totally goth and lost. In typical fashion, Perrotta spend a lot of time on inter-personal relationships and break-ups. The writing is quick and the book flies by. I recommend it to readers of Tom Perrotta as one of his better books.

Great concept. Watched the TV show before reading the book, so it was hard to remain completely open to the experience of the book. That being said, i love the show so i was automatically into the book. The ending left me wanting more and this is one of the rare times i would ever say the show (i.e. Hollywood version) is better than the book.

Initially, one thinks the novel will be concerned with why 2% of the world's population suddenly disappeared. While it's in the background, it's never part of the plot. Instead, this work concerns itself with those "left over," and the impact the disappearance of family and friends has had on them over the past three years, continuing into the present.
The characterization is well done. Each of the half dozen or so characters the book features seem like people in your family, or those next door, or at work, or at school. Decisions made by these three years after the "sudden departure," are often rooted in that event, and their decisions often surprise you, but seem most understandable.
One gauge of the impact of a novel is that you don't want it to end. For me, "The Leftovers" was one of these.
(Thus far, the book exhibits more continuity than the new TV series, which takes bits and pieces from the novel, but adds a lot of new/different material of its own).

While I am used to postmodern novels which end without resolution , I felt there was too much left to the imagination.. One wants the satisfaction of some understanding of issues, character development...

Interesting characters and story idea with some good twists. I wish some of the characters were more fully developed, as the book finished without resolving many of their storylines. Maybe needs a sequel to finish things off?

The Leftovers is a fantastic read for anyone with abandonment issues. Any kind of abandonment issues. Lost love, lost parents, lost children, lost religion - it's all here, and it's beautiful and sad and somehow funny. Tom Perrotta writes fast clear prose that pulls you along so invisibly that you can't help but fall in love with these flawed and lovely characters.

I read this straight through and want to read it again.

REALLY! THAT'S HOW IT ENDS? I started reading because the HBO series intrigued me. The story is interesting, quick; but there are a lot of loose ends and nonsensical character wrap-ups.. And the ending. I flipped the page thinking there had to be more. There wasn't. I have to finish watching the series to compare and contrast the differences (major from what I saw.).

The premise of this book is fascinating, though its theme of grief and loss are existential. Told through the relationships and character- building, it was an enjoyable read that doesn't try to tie up all the loose ends in life with neat cliches. I liked it a lot.

The Leftovers is a fantastic read for anyone with abandonment issues. Any kind of abandonment issues. Lost love, lost parents, lost children, lost religion - it's all here, and it's beautiful and sad and somehow funny. Tom Perrotta writes fast clear prose that pulls you along so invisibly that you can't help but fall in love with these flawed and lovely characters.

I read this straight through and want to read it again.

REALLY! THAT'S HOW IT ENDS? I started reading because the HBO series intrigued me. The story is interesting, quick; but there are a lot of loose ends and nonsensical character wrap-ups.. And the ending. I flipped the page thinking there had to be more. There wasn't. I have to finish watching the series to compare and contrast the differences (major from what I saw.).

The premise of this book is fascinating, though its theme of grief and loss are existential. Told through the relationships and character- building, it was an enjoyable read that doesn't try to tie up all the loose ends in life with neat cliches. I liked it a lot.

This book has a great premise and grabs your attention right away. Unfortunately, the middle of the book meanders all over the place...and there is absolutely no resolution for any of the characters at the end...You are just left hanging wondering what the heck just happened. I know it is the writer's perogative to write whatever he/she wants, but I like to have some idea about the characters fate when I take the time to read a book...I don't know that is just me. I was going to watch the TV adaptation on HBO...but I think I will pass.

I thought it was a very interesting book! Before purchasing I read some reviews saying it was boring or slow, and focused too much on typical suburban people/themes but I didn't mind that at all. The characters in the book were all engaging to me and I cared about what happened to them all. I just finished the book after watching the first season of the show on HBO. I really like the show and I am interested to see where it goes next season. Many people complained that the book is totally different than the show, but I disagree. Many of the characters are the same/similar and many key plot points are almost exactly as they are in the book. The show does omit certain people/plot points of the book and adds on others but I think that is normal when adapting a book for tv or a movie. If you enjoy the tv show, you will enjoy the book and vice versa. All in all, I thought the book was an interesting, thought provoking book. It is also a quick read.

Tom Perrotta writes about ordinary people, living ordinary lives in suburbia. In his previous books, he's told the tale of young suburban parents falling into an extra-marital affair ("Little Children"), of a New Jersey student who goes to Yale and learns how to integrate his persona as the son of a lunch-truck driver with that of an Ivy League student ("Joe College"), and of a high school sex-ed teacher whose career is jeopardized after admitting to her students that people may engage in oral sex because they like it ("The Abstinence Teacher"). Even the central dramatic events in these (very good) books are, well, ordinary.

"The Leftovers" is different. While it's again about ordinary people living in suburbia, the novel takes place after a most extraordinary event: the "Sudden Disappearance" in which millions of people around the world have vanished. It's a rapture-like event, except that unlike the rapture, the people in Perrott's book just literally disappear rather than flying into the sky, and unlike the rapture, there appears to be no rhyme or reason to which people disappear. Those who do include "Hindus and Buddhists and Muslims and Jews and atheists and animists and homosexuals and Eskimos and Mormans and Zoroastrians", as well as a whole bunch celebrities: "John Mellencamp and Jennifer Lopez, Shaq and Adam Sandler, Miss Texas and Greta Van Susteren, Vladimiar Putin and the Pope." The Sudden Disappearance happens on Oct. 14, and the multiple references to "Oct. 14" are clearly intended to recall Sept. 11, and the thousands who suddenly disappeared that fateful day.

Perrotta's novel begins three years after the Sudden Disappearance and focuses on the residents of the Mapleton who were left behind--the leftovers. They've responded in two ways. Some, like Kevin Garvey, have tried to regain the ordinary lives they led prior to Oct. 14, doing things like running for mayor and joining a softball team, while others, like Kevin's wife Laurie, adopt extreme and unusual behaviors. Laurie, for example, joins the G.R.--the Guilty Remnants--a cult who members wear white, refuse to speak, and wander around town smoking cigarettes and staring at--"watching"--people outside the G.R. Another cult eschews baths and shoes--allowing just the slight leniency of flip-flops when there's snow on the ground--while a third gathers around a prophet who offers healing hugs, but also turns out to have a penchant for impregnating underage girls. And then there's the Rev. Matt Jamison, who is so disappointed that he has been left behind that he makes it his personal mission to out all the infidelities and petty crimes of those who have disappeared.

Perrotta makes clear that both types of response to an event like Oct. 14 (and thus, Sept. 11?) are fraught with problems. The craziness of the cults is evident, but so is the craziness of trying to resume an ordinary life: to do so is to behave in ways that can't be anything but absurd. Here is Perrotta describing a Thanksgiving dinner: "What a beautiful bird, they kept telling one another, which was a weird things to say about a dead thing without a head. And then . . .cousin Jerry had made everyone post for a group photograph, with the beautiful bird occupying the place of honor." And here, he depicts an announcement at the City Council Meeting: "Congratulations to Brownie Troop 173, whose second annual gingerbread cookie fund-raiser netted over three hundred dollars for Fuzzy Amigos International, a charity that sends stuffed animals to impoverished indigenous children in Ecuador, Boliva, and Peru". What would pass without comment during a normal time becomes downright ludicrous when huge numbers of people have just evaporated.

And yet, the book's ending makes clear Perrotta's real belief about how we must respond to tragedy. After an unexpected revelation about the G.R. that wallops the reader, there is a further tidying of loose ends that leaves one with hope about the future of those characters who have determined that they will go on living their ordinary lives.

The basic conceit of the book allows Perrotta a great deal of space to explore the experience of loss and, in particular, religion as way deal with that loss. Or maybe spirituality might be a better term, as existing organized religions don't factor into the characters' lives so much. Christianity in the figure of the town's minister crumples into a scream of denial fairly early on in the novel. The novel looks primarily at the characters as individuals in the grip of loss and how they become swept up in or affected by a variety of cultish responses to the mass disappearances. The only character seemingly unaffected the new religions is the woman who lost her husband and children to the disappearances and becomes too deeply damaged to sustain interpersonal relationships, though of the main characters she is the one most affected by Christianity, both positively in what initially remains and then badly by its collapse. The main focus is on the group known as the Guilty Remnant, which takes up where Christianity drops off. and here Perrotta very convincingly evokes how mainstream Protestantism might plausibly become an extremist, monastic cult given an unshakeable sign of an approaching end-time. There is also the hedonistic hippie cult and the New Age-y charlatan Holy Wayne and his followers that draw in to different degrees another major character. The latter cult is the only where the book brushes briefly with the metaphysical, as it's never made clear if Wayne actually has spiritual power or has simply convinced others that he does. Instead the book looks at how people connect, and disconnect, in the wake of inexplicable tragedy, and its due to the books sympathy and honesty, I think, that religious community, as critical as it is of that community, becomes such a preoccupation of the narrative. It's a deeply affecting and somewhat disturbing book.

Girlfriend in a Coma. By Douglas Coupland.

I really wanted to like The Leftovers. But truthfully the best I can say is meh. And that's generous. Seriously pick up Girlfriend in a Coma, it's 20 years old, probably at the library and much better.

The story has a lot of potential, but went nowhere. I wound up feeling disappointed because an event like this would have a jarring impact on those left behind. I didn't that sense of upheaval from the characters .

Not sure I want to bother with the upcoming HBO series.

The leftovers has an interesting concept and a great cast of characters. I enjoyed the story, it is well written and interesting. I give it four stars because it really never went where I wanted it to go. I'm going to continue with that analysis here and it will be a major spoiler so stop now if you intend to read the book. What I wanted was to have the "event" be at least somewhat explained. While it is interesting to imagine and explore how people's lives would change if something like this happened, it's not really that exciting to read about. Maybe there will be a sequel and we will get more to the heart of the reasons why this happened or maybe the larger consequences beyond just what is happening in this small community. In the end, it just wasn't quite enough, it could have been so much more. But that's me, I like the idea of science fiction or fantasy and while this had a touch of it in that people just disappeared, that was it, the rest was just regular people in the regular world doing things that were interesting just not THAT interesting.

Really enjoyed this book. After watching the series I was hoping for something a little different. It was. Somewhat of an apocalyptic love story. Not crazy about how we're left to draw our on conclusions about the ending, but all in all: a great book.

With such an interesting and clever premise, I expected to find this book enjoyable and thought provoking, or maybe a humorous satire. It wasn't any of that. You might say it presented an existentialist view, but that would be a stretch, in my opinion. Like others, I struggled to stay interested as a seemingly endless stream of characters were introduced. There were so many it was not possible to get to know much about any of them, and as a result I didn't care about the characters until about three quarters of the way through the book. At that point things came together and proceeded to a conclusion. But all in all, the book was a letdown.

While psychologically interesting the book never offers the energy and motion the premise requires.

If you're going to show what happens to those remaining after the Rapture and set up a world filled with cults, have them do more. Don't just live inside their heads. As interesting as that may be, the author teased too many potentially interesting plot thread only to not satisfy any of them.

Given that it was a character-driving novel, I should note the Perrotta did do that well. The characters were living, breathing, interesting people. I just wish they did a lot more.

I thought the Rapture story line would be an interesting read. But the book never really took off for me, so I found it to be an average read and not something I anxiously looked forward to picking up. It had several characters who had potential for interesting stories, but it seemed a book with no purpose. The ending was quite abrupt, so if you are someone who likes their stories wrapped up nice and neat, this one will disappoint.

After a rapture-like event, the world changes drastically for many of Perrotta's characters, while others attempt to move on and create a new normal. Interesting premise explored from several different points of view. I really enjoyed most of these characters. Weighty topic but yet this manages to be an entertaining and at times funny book.

The television series is driving me nuts because they still have not indicated what happened. They are not leaning toward any answers - extraterrestrial? religious? Nope, absolutely nothing. Just a bunch of smokers in white, a lonely sheriff who is the mayor in the book. Ok, sorry, I was reviewing the television show. But guess what - the book is just exactly the same. To me a book has a beginning - it's like a "hello." It tells you what the book is going to be about in a few words - you get the idea if the book is well written. Then you get into character development. Now, watching the tv show I got so frustrated no knowing what was driving the characters and what they were thinking, my immediate thought was, that will be in the book. A book always fills in those blanks. That's why people usually say the book was better than the movie. No guess - we read what the characters are thinking. Not in this book. This might have been a good book if questions had been answered, and if there had been a resolution. Because there was NO resolution in the book, I am not expecting one on the tv show. I hope I am surprised. I can usually "get" what an author is trying to say, but the truth is that this book is as much of a mystery at the end as it was at the beginning. I can't think of many things more frustrating than a book with no resolution. I guess most would call it an "ending," but I like my endings to resolve mysteries. I think I have been generous with 3 stars.

I read this book because my book club selected it for our September book and that was the only reason that I finished it. In a nutshell, the characters were boring, the plot was boring, and once I finished it, I could not find the point to having read it.

After seeing an internet article about JJ Abrahms writing a TV series based off this book i immediately picked up this book thinking it would be amazing. Well it didn't take long for me to finish the book since it was only 300ish pages. The book starts off really well with a nice setup about the rapture, introduction of characters that you follow throughout the book and their daily activities after the rapture. My major complaint of the book is not much goes on during the book. Basically most of the characters go on with their lives thinking about the loved ones that disappeared here and there, but nothing worth reading about in the book. Even at the end of book when everyone finds closure and it just ends I didn't really feel much for it. Hopefully the show will have a better plot than the book did.

I purchased this on the strength of the pilot episode of the HBO series. That show seems to be an edgy LOST-like Fantasy/Mystery. This book is more of a melodrama about people dealing with tragedy. Perrotta has a great writing style, but this wasn't the type of story I thought it would be.