By Tom Perrotta
Tom Perrotta’s The Leftovers opens with a startling premise: a sudden, unexplained event causes a portion of the world’s population to vanish, leaving everyone else behind to grapple with the fallout.
Set in a small suburban community, the novel follows multiple characters as they struggle to make sense of loss, grief, and a world that no longer operates by familiar rules.
I went in without much familiarity with the concept of the rapture, so the premise itself was genuinely shocking and kept me guessing throughout. Perrotta does a solid job juggling multiple storylines and perspectives, and I found the ending satisfying in the way it brings emotional closure, even if it avoids easy answers.
I enjoyed the book and gave it four stars, though it’s one of the rare cases where I thought the TV adaptation ultimately deepened the story and surpassed the novel.