Leftovers (Perrotta) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Mr. Perrotta....has trouble reconciling [his] high concept platform with his talent for smaller-scale portraits of awkward adolescents and angst-ridden suburban families. The result is a poignant but deeply flawed novel.... [Yet] his affectionate but astringent understanding of his characters and their imperfections; his appreciation of the dark undertow of loss that lurks beneath the familiar, glossy surface of suburban life
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times


Perrotta has delivered a troubling disquisition on how ordinary people react to extraordinary and inexplicable events, the power of family to hurt and to heal, and the unobtrusive ease with which faith can slide into fanaticism. The Leftovers is, simply put, the best "Twilight Zone" episode you never saw—not "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" but "The Monsters Are Us in Mapleton." That they are quiet monsters only makes them more eerie.
Stephen King - New York Times Book Review


Perrotta's shift away from comedy has been picking up speed since Little Children, and despite some witty touches and a few broad swipes at manipulative preachers and cynical politicians, The Leftovers is not particularly satirical or even humorous. But it is certainly his most mature, absorbing novel, one that confirms his development from a funnyman to a daring chronicler of our most profound anxieties and human desires.
Ron Charles - Washington Post


October 14 looked like any other day in the leafy New England enclave of Mapleton—until it didn't. Eighty-seven townspeople and millions more around the world simply disappeared. Cars careened with no one behind the wheel, school kids were without teachers, food went uneaten on dinner tables, and lovers found themselves abandoned. The Rapture? No one knows. What we do know is that the psychological trauma for those left behind is overwhelming, and who better than Perrotta, known for his ability to zero in on the vicissitudes of middle-class America (Little Children; The Abstinence Teacher) to grapple with the impact? Three years after "The Sudden Departure," Kevin Garvey's wife has joined a cult, son Tom has ditched college to follow guru Holy Wayne, and lovely daughter Jill has shaved her head and taken up with stoners. Nora Durst's life is in a holding pattern as she awaits the return of her husband and child, while Reverend Jamison, enraged at being passed over, publishes a newsletter exposing the failings of the missing. VERDICT Perrotta has taken a subject that could easily slip into slapstick and imbued it with gravitas. Like Richard Russo, he softens the sting of satire with deep compassion for his characters in all their confusion, guilt, grief, and humanity. —Sally Bissell, Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Ft. Myers, FL 
Library Journal

A bestselling novelist returns with his most ambitious book to date.... There's even a happy ending of sorts, as characters adapt and keep going, fortified by the knowledge that they "were more than the sum of what had been taken from" them.
Kirkus Reviews