Thursday, April 3, 2014

The Leftovers Written by: Tom Perrotta




Hi there readers, well new month, I fell a little short last month compared to the past few months, but... c'mon been buuuusy. Though, it felt good to get back into reading towards the end of March and now into April. I saw this book and thought huh, interesting... The cover was what intrigued me, I thought is this a book about bad cooking? Then I read the jacket... and I asked myself hm... what if "Whoose right now, with no explanation a number of us simply vanished?" What would I do? Okay... continuing "Would some of us collapse? Would others of us go on, one foot in front of the other, as we did before the world turned upside down?" Well, I don't know if people vanishing would change the entire world upside down, but okay yeah I get what you're getting at... continued reading and decided, yup I've got to read this. Mostly because I love how many apocolypses I've apparently survived in my lifetime Y2K, Mayan, and who knows how many other Christian prophecies have supposedly been deemed upon us, oh and of course Ragnarok is going on now... so what would happen? I chose to listen to this book, and I have to say I was not disappointed in the voice actor this book was narrated by Dennis Boutsikaris his voice is somehow soothing and not at all shrill or overly dynamic, his reading was just smooth and brought you along the tale his voice changing subtly from character to character, but not too much and so he continues with his very relaxing tone an all American type of voice that lacks an accent but somehow comes off as American and well rounded average guy. Perhaps he's not what I imagined, but his voice definitely suited this book. The big scene for this tale is little town called Mapleton whose citizens have lost many of their neighbors, friends, and loved ones in the unknown event known to the world as the "sudden departure." These citizens are trying to go on and figure out what they should do to exactly make that happen. Nothing though, since the sudden departure has been the same. Kevin Garvey, Mapleton's new mayor is trying to speed up this healing process and to bring a sense of renewed hope and purpose to his traumatized community. Kevin though can't even stop his own family from falling apart; his wife, Laurie has left him and their children to join a silent cult known as the Guilty Remnant; his son, Tom is gone too, he's dropped out of college and follows a sketchy prophet named Holy Wayne. And his daughter, well she's home, but Kevin doesn't really recognize his baby girl anymore. There's a few others we follow in this tale who all are connected to Kevin and his family in some way, and readers... if the rapture had occurred I wonder, would we have all went as Looney as a lot of these people went? It is odd, because the world really didn't change just the millions of people vanishing changed those left behind, but the world did not change, and yet people abandoned their jobs, their families, and decide what's the point? Some people decide they only have seven years until judgment so they should party as hard as possible, and others decide they should be religious and triple their pious lives. But, no one knows what's right, because so many can't figure out what happened, because readers... the great departed it seems could have been anyone. I don't know if I really liked this book, it was entertaining, but the characters did not feel real to me, they felt like reflections as if they were just reactions moving forward rather than real people. The book jumped forward into time it seemed abruptly as if the author thought he had completed one thought and now it was time to just move on. The ending too just kind of ends. So, an interesting book, amusing, and raises some interesting questions, but was just a little flat for me.

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