The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta

The title of this book refers to the people who were left behind. The story unfolds in the wake of an event very much like the Christian Rapture and revolves around those left behind. This Rapture — the simultaneous evaporation of an untold number of people — appears to have nothing to do with faith or goodness. It is not so much reward as it is an eeny meeny miney moe, you must go kind of event. This adds a layer of uncertainty to the world Perrotta describes. "As far as anyone could tell," he writes, "it was a random harvest, and the one thing the Rapture couldn't be was random. … An indiscriminate Rapture was no Rapture at all." The idea of a Rapture that may not be the Rapture is vintage Perrotta; he's a satirist who likes to poke fun at the vagaries of contemporary life. The response people have to it is predictable and yet very inviting as a story. There are those who ramp up their piousness, in the hopes of being chosen in the second go round. They are ever more convinced that their faith will bear fruit, and they are much more invested in proselytizing, as well as pointing out the sins of others. There are people who are just trying to cope. As you would imagine, husbands lose wives, children are gone, there is a lot of grief following such an event. The loss is enormous. And there are a lot of people who are suddenly single who didn't expect to be, so there are relationship opportunities. The possibilities are endless, and Perrotta does a good job of plumbing them.