The Nature of Things

Mrs. Fletcher is Eve Fletcher, a 46-year-old divorcee whose adored son, Brendan, her only child, has just left for his freshman year in college, leaving her with the proverbial empty nest. In her loneliness, she casts about for something that will bring meaning to her life. It's not as if "empty nest" means an empty life. Eve has a satisfying job as the executive director of a senior center. She has friends and interacts daily with her staff and with the seniors who come to the center, but she definitely feels that something is missing. She signs up at the local community college to take a course on Gender and Society at night. The course is taught by a fascinating transgender instructor and the other students are an interesting mixed bag of personalities and life experiences at all stages of life. Eve becomes engrossed in new avenues of thought that are opened up for her by the course. At some point, after Brendan leaves for college, she receives an anonymous text messag...

I am old enough to remember that wonderful sci-fi television series  The Twilight Zone . It was one of the most original and imaginative series of its time and I can't think of any television series since that has surpassed it. For those of us who experienced it first-hand, it has certainly stood the test of time.  The Leftovers  could have been an episode on  The Twilight Zone  and that is high praise indeed. Tom Perrotta imagines a world in which millions of people have suddenly vanished without a trace. Like puffs of smoke on the wind, they have "Suddenly Departed." This rapture-like event, however, does not seem to have had a religious component, although some of those who are left behind, the "Leftovers," try to impose one on it. The people who disappeared were of every possible religious faith or lack of faith and seemingly every possible state of morality and from every corner of the earth. As time passes - three years at the telling of this story - there...