The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta

This week I finished The Leftovers, a phenomenal novel by Tom Perrotta. This book was the source material for one of my favorite television shows of all time, and I’ve always meant to read the book. The show was a substantial inspiration for some of my writing and my general desire to be a writer, but because I’m an idiot, I only just got around to the book.

Despite initially kicking myself for waiting so long to read what I can now say is one of my favorite books, I have come to feel it was for the best that I waited. If I’d read this book back when I watched the show, I would’ve had a completely different reading because I was a different person in a different world, and that always shapes ones reading.

I always felt that, in some ways, the show The Leftovers was a discussion about the aftermath of 9/11. I’m sure I’m not original in this thought, but, as Pete Campbell once famously claimed, I came to it independently. The way that loss is handled, particularly in the first season, which is the only one that follows the novel, always struck me as a good parallel for that horrific event. The almost competitive nature of grief. The way people who lost no one could seem more rattled than those who lost everything. The way people tried to own the tragedy and coopt it to their own devices.

But listening to the book now, with Covid the fresh catastrophe in my mind, I found that it wasn’t as simple as a novel about 9/11. It was about any cataclysmic moment. It was about the way that we, as a society, deal with these disasters.

In an excellent interview with the author that followed the audiobook (I love when audiobooks have these!), Tom Perrotta discusses how the novel was primarily influenced not by 9/11 but by the 2008 financial collapse and the sense of uncertainty in the future that followed it. During that interview, he discussed wanting to write about “[a] world where characters no longer felt their futures were guaranteed or predictable or comprehensible.”

He certainly captured this in his novel, which is at times funny and suspenseful, and always beautifully written. Each character gives you a separate view of the tragedy and its aftermath. He focuses on a small town and the people in it as opposed to trying to deal with large-scale institutions. This is effective. We have too many stories – zombies, disasters, superheroes destroying cities – that deal with the macro. They often become unwieldy and beat us over the head with the allegory. They lack subtlety and nuance. They lack a soul.

Perrotta avoids that trap. He sticks to the micro, to a family torn open by a tragedy and a woman dealing with the immense grief of losing everything. In doing this, he shows us the truth. Shows us how we actually deal with a catastrophe.

If this novel worked in some ways as a discussion of 9/11, the 2008 financial collapse, or any other disasters, I can’t imagine that even Perrotta saw how well it would fit Covid.

One of the primary themes of this book is how, after everything seems to have fallen apart, life goes on. The simple tragedy of having to forget and get on with your life. This is easier for some. If you didn’t lose anyone during Covid, you might feel that we all need to move past it. Get the country back up and running, resume the daily banality of our lives.

But that isn’t the case for everyone. Not for those who lost people. Not for those whose lives are irrevocably altered in some way by the virus. Sometimes these people aren’t the ones directly affected. Someone might have never contracted it, didn’t lose anyone, seemed untouched on the surface, but still can’t move past it because it isn’t only physical loss that stays with us. It’s that very uncertainty that The Leftovers captures so well.

 Many people felt their futures weren’t guaranteed, predictable, or comprehensible before Covid. I don’t think many of us have any illusions about the stability of the structures around us. Not anymore. But Covid laid those flaws bare in the same way that Perrotta’s rapture did.

Everyone in The Leftovers was affected by the rapture. Whether they lost someone or not, they felt it, it left a scar. And after it was over, they felt a clawing inability to return to their daily lives. This spawned cults and movements and sexual exploration. It caused some to give up everything and others to try to lie their way back to normality. Some used this tragedy to gain wealth and power, while others sought to destroy themselves. Existing societal divisions were heightened, and people who once seemed rational turned to irrationality in the face of chaos. And in the end, slowly, the world tried to forget.

Sound familiar?

I recommend that you read (or listen to) this book. Despite what this post may indicate, it really is funny at times. It’s sweet and compassionate and builds unforgettable characters. It lives in you even after you’ve finished it.

If you have already read it, I’d say try it again. It might look different today.

Sometimes I’m wary of going to a source text for something I love. It’s an odd experience. I remember listening to The Godfather a few years ago and being supremely disappointed. All the good things that the book does are done better in the movie, and all the remaining parts that didn’t make it into Coppola’s masterpiece were left out for a good reason.

This isn’t that. This is a book that stands on its own. It is, naturally, like the show, but it makes different choices and leaves you with a distinct aftertaste. They’re two iconic pieces of culture from the twenty-first century, and both seem to be only getting better with time.

I’m debating rewatching the show and doing periodic posts on it. I think it, like the book, would show itself in a new light in our current world. I’ll let you know if I decide to do that.

As always, if you know someone who might like this, please tell them about my substack, website, or both. It would be a great help to me. Thanks for reading!