Matt Jamison becomes chief among the rapture deniers of the remaining Mapleton population: “He wept frequently and kept up a running monologue about. The rapture’s failure to conform to biblical prophecy has driven some people plumb over the edge. One girl was so humiliated she had to leave school. then show the videos down in the TV room. When Tom Garvey pledges a fraternity at Syracuse, one of the brothers tells him about a rapturee from Alpha Tau Omega: “He kept a hidden camera in his bedroom. Nor do all (or even most) of the missing qualify as Camping-style Christians those raptured away include Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews and the odd alcoholic. Just how many millions Perrotta doesn’t specify, but it can’t have been too many, because the phones still work and Starbucks still dispenses coffee by the grande. The Garvey family - Kevin, Laurie and their two children, Tom and Jill - are the Mapleton residents at the center of Perrotta’s novel, which opens three years after a rapturelike event has whisked millions of people off the face of the earth.

Certainly there’s enough current interest in the End of Days to suggest that “The Leftovers,” Perrotta’s striking take on the rapture (or something like it), may be widely discussed and could become the subject of many a Sunday sermon. It’s hard to tell how many people actually believe in this lurid idea, but Camping’s video assurances that the rapture was going to occur on May 21, 2011, quickly went viral one site offered a digital countdown to the big nonevent. The unbelieving majority will be left to suffer from five months to a year of war, disease and climatological upheaval.Īfter that, the earth will go pop and any surviving pagans will, presumably, be sent straight to hell, where the temperature is high and all the piped-in music is by the Singing Senators, featuring John Ashcroft and Trent Lott. Some Christians believe that when the rapture comes, those who have accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior will immediately be whisked off to heaven.

I’m betting that reviews of “The Leftovers” that do not link Perrotta and Camping will be few and far between.įor those of you who wasted the spring of 2011 following less substantive stories - tornadoes, nuclear meltdowns, unrest in the Mideast, the Further Adventures of Snooki - Camping is a preacher with an apocalyptic worldview, moderately hilarious dentures and strong ideas about the biblical prophecy known as the rapture.

Given the subject of his new novel, “The Leftovers,” probably no one followed the story of the noted evangelical (and former Internet hottie) Harold Camping more closely than Tom Perrotta, a novelist who is to the suburban enclaves of America what Sherwood Anderson was to Ohio.

The leftovers book series