The Rapture — the sudden ascension of the faithful, in the most on-the-nose iteration possible of the phrase “act of God” — is an intriguing enough concept to provide the backbone for the best-selling “Left Behind” book series, as well as for the real-life temporary mania last May. Harold Camping’s prediction of a May 22 Judgment Day caught on, in part, because of natural curiosity: What if he had been right? What would happen if the faithful really did suddenly disappear?
Answers are not to be found in “The Leftovers,” Tom Perrotta’s new novel, which presents a civilization left largely unchanged after an event referred to in the story as The Sudden Departure. It’s not the lack of change from society pre-Departure that’s troubling — it’s the lack of change from the author’s previous novels (suburban comedies of manners like “Little Children” and “The Abstinence Teacher”) that leave the reader wondering what could spur Perrotta to do more than observe goings-on in the lives of spouses and their children.
Seven years after “Little Children,” Perrotta’s main focus remains on the suburban family — in this case, the Garveys. Father Kevin is elected mayor of the small town of Mapleton after the Departure (not explicitly, here, an event with biblical implications — no one knows why the Departure occurred), and mother Laurie joins the splinter religious group the Guilty Remnant.
What do the Guilty Remnant believe? It’s unclear: While the religious group’s rituals are well-defined by Perrotta — they stalk certain citizens, trailing the smoke from lit cigarettes to announce their presence and their feelings of post-apocalyptic woe — the stalking and the cigarettes are there because Perrotta says they are. That’s to say nothing of the reasons behind Laurie’s abandoning her family to join the Remnant. While not every detail needs to be spelled out for the adult reader, Perrotta treads such unfamiliar territory that it’s disappointing that he either declines to explain what his characters are experiencing or illustrates it through same-old drudgeries-of-suburbia terms. (Laurie is, in the end, a bored mother yearning to break free of the demands of home life, not unlike the female protagonists of Perrotta’s last two novels.)
While in the past Perrotta’s focus on the ins and outs of suburban family life made sense — “Little Children,” for instance, used pool-club- and-playground life to illustrate the keen feeling of regret for life poorly lived — the author has overloaded that template with too much incident. We’re asked to grapple with the notion that a portion of the citizenry has evaporated into thin air and still care about whether Kevin and Laurie’s daughter manages to pull together a decent high school report card. A subplot featuring their son’s immersion in a second, hazily defined cult goes nowhere — and the reader is never clear as to whether that son is trying to get home, a confusion that haunts the entire book. Mapleton either is or is not important to Perrotta: It’s sketched with lots of stereotypical figures but little real character. It’s an already-hazy backdrop for the Guilty Remnant’s cigarette smoke.
If Perrotta is trying to argue, at book length, that life continues after tragedy, he succeeds: Aside from the two cults and specific instances of individual bereavement outside the Garvey family, this novel is about a family whose mother leaves the suburban nest to achieve individual fulfillment. There’s a reason, though, that the extra-pulpy “Left Behind” books are so successful, and it’s not merely in the theological solutions they provide to us sinners. Those novels imbue the end times with a sense of vivid possibility, while no one reading “The Leftovers” would ever wonder “What if?” Given a fairly thrilling concept, this novel stays sadly earthbound.
Answers are not to be found in “The Leftovers,” Tom Perrotta’s new novel, which presents a civilization left largely unchanged after an event referred to in the story as The Sudden Departure. It’s not the lack of change from society pre-Departure that’s troubling — it’s the lack of change from the author’s previous novels (suburban comedies of manners like “Little Children” and “The Abstinence Teacher”) that leave the reader wondering what could spur Perrotta to do more than observe goings-on in the lives of spouses and their children.
Seven years after “Little Children,” Perrotta’s main focus remains on the suburban family — in this case, the Garveys. Father Kevin is elected mayor of the small town of Mapleton after the Departure (not explicitly, here, an event with biblical implications — no one knows why the Departure occurred), and mother Laurie joins the splinter religious group the Guilty Remnant.
What do the Guilty Remnant believe? It’s unclear: While the religious group’s rituals are well-defined by Perrotta — they stalk certain citizens, trailing the smoke from lit cigarettes to announce their presence and their feelings of post-apocalyptic woe — the stalking and the cigarettes are there because Perrotta says they are. That’s to say nothing of the reasons behind Laurie’s abandoning her family to join the Remnant. While not every detail needs to be spelled out for the adult reader, Perrotta treads such unfamiliar territory that it’s disappointing that he either declines to explain what his characters are experiencing or illustrates it through same-old drudgeries-of-suburbia terms. (Laurie is, in the end, a bored mother yearning to break free of the demands of home life, not unlike the female protagonists of Perrotta’s last two novels.)
While in the past Perrotta’s focus on the ins and outs of suburban family life made sense — “Little Children,” for instance, used pool-club- and-playground life to illustrate the keen feeling of regret for life poorly lived — the author has overloaded that template with too much incident. We’re asked to grapple with the notion that a portion of the citizenry has evaporated into thin air and still care about whether Kevin and Laurie’s daughter manages to pull together a decent high school report card. A subplot featuring their son’s immersion in a second, hazily defined cult goes nowhere — and the reader is never clear as to whether that son is trying to get home, a confusion that haunts the entire book. Mapleton either is or is not important to Perrotta: It’s sketched with lots of stereotypical figures but little real character. It’s an already-hazy backdrop for the Guilty Remnant’s cigarette smoke.
If Perrotta is trying to argue, at book length, that life continues after tragedy, he succeeds: Aside from the two cults and specific instances of individual bereavement outside the Garvey family, this novel is about a family whose mother leaves the suburban nest to achieve individual fulfillment. There’s a reason, though, that the extra-pulpy “Left Behind” books are so successful, and it’s not merely in the theological solutions they provide to us sinners. Those novels imbue the end times with a sense of vivid possibility, while no one reading “The Leftovers” would ever wonder “What if?” Given a fairly thrilling concept, this novel stays sadly earthbound.
