Customer Reviews

Rapture

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I picked up Liz Jensen's "The Rapture" as a lark. Who doesn't like to contemplate the end of the world as a bit of entertainment? But Jensen's ambitious and original new novel grabbed me within the first few chapters and never let me go. An ingenious combination of eco-thriller, psychological chiller, and apocalyptic/biblical horror story--"The Rapture" is a smart read that is both timely and plausible in its set-up, but mysterious and otherworldly in its execution. It is a rare and beguiling mix of genres that serves the story well through to its powerful and exciting climax.

At the heart of "The Rapture" is an intriguing, damaged heroine. Gabrielle Fox is a therapist rebuilding her life after an accident has killed her family and left her paralyzed. Vulnerable and raw, she is charged with a new patient--a sixteen year old girl who viciously murdered her mother. Manipulative and disturbed, Bethany Krall also seems to have a talent for predicting natural disasters. Gabrielle struggles to uncover a logical explanation--is it a hoax, dementia, or something more unexplainable? But can Gabrielle handle the truth? As more of Bethany's visions come true, the debate of science versus faith becomes a pivotal element as a dangerous end is foretold.

I found "The Rapture" to be enthralling. The characters are well drawn. Gabrielle, especially, displays much depth as she explores these uncharted mysteries. And Bethany is a terrific construct. Is she a prophet or a demon or a deranged girl out to cause trouble? There is a lot of scientific discussion in "The Rapture" due to the ecological implications of what is happening--which might have slowed a lesser novel down. Ditto for religious conjecture. But Jensen expertly weaves her plot points together so that the momentum never wanes. And, refreshingly, "The Rapture" doesn't chicken out and provide easy answers. Many of the questions it raises, especially in regard to Bethany, are left up to interpretation--so different people may respond differently--which is fantastic! I loved "The Rapture," which came as a huge surprise! It's an intelligent thriller with genuine thrills that never dumbs down or compromises its story. KGHarris, 8/09.

60. The Rapture by Liz Jensen

I wish I could remember who recommended this one, I owe them a massive thank you. It is definately one of my memorable reads for the year.

Bethany is troubled to say the least. Currently being treated in a youth mental facility after violently killing her mother. As a last resort the facility begins sessions of ECT, electroshock therapy. Suddenly, Bethany claims she can predict the natural disasters that are plaguing the world more and more often. Her new therapist Gabrielle, who is fighting her own personal demons, is put to the task of getting to the bottom of it, but the bottom is not what anyone expects. Bethany predicts a disaster like none other....one that will be the end of everything as we know it.

Both Bethany and Gabrielle are fighting their demons, and they need each other to fight them off. The characters we both fascinating to me. The way they interact is perfect. Their story unfolds and brings other characters to them in a way that takes you to into the story as well. The story ends in a way that I never quite saw coming, and in a sad way everyone gets what they want (I'm really not giving much away here I promise).

If you can get your hands on this book...do it. You will not regret it.

5/5

A powerful story with characters I connect with can actually have a physical impact on me - my stomach churns, my heart races, my palms sweat.

That said, after turning the final page of The Rapture by Liz Jensen, I felt like I had just run a marathon. The book is full of emotion, tension, suspense and well-researched information -- all of the ingredients of a great novel.

The Rapture introduces Gabrielle Fox, a beautiful but deeply damaged clinical psychologist. Paralyzed from the waist down, Gabrielle has come to Oxsmith, a hospital for criminally insane youth in Hadporth, England, to start anew personally and professionally. She leaves behind a tragic and traumatic history in London that has left her broken physically and emotionally.

Gabrielle becomes fixated on one of her art therapy patients, 16-year-old Bethany Krall, the daughter of a fanatical Faith Wave pastor who brutally murdered her mother two years earlier. Bethany is having apocalyptic visions of natural disasters worldwide, drawing highly detailed and accurate pictures of events that have yet to happen, from a megahurricane in Brazil to a major earthquake in Istanbul.

Gabrielle spends the rest of the book trying to decipher Bethany's disturbing prophecies, to determine whether the girl is a psychotic or a gifted and to figure out how much she's willing to invest in the visions - and the millions of lives at stake if they're true. The therapist's personal drama is backdropped by scenes of global political upheaval, disease, climate change and social chaos that further whip the book's atmosphere into a frenzy that builds toward a truly unforgettable ending.

I thought Jensen's writing was breathtaking. She uses language that is rich in both imagery and vocabulary -- I think I would have loved the book no matter what its topic, just because of the way the author writes. Her characters are deeply flawed and very human -- although sometimes frustratingly so. Gabrielle is at times infuriating in her self-doubt and paranoia, but her troubled psyche is key to the plot.

The story is sometimes painful to read, and Jensen doesn't pull her punches. This is apocalyptic fiction, folks. Don't expect a sunshine-and-rainbows ending. The events contained within are disturbing and realistically plausible, and have very well given me something else to sit up at night worrying about. Jensen's end-of-days horror is not a recycled asteroid-hits-Earth scenario, but a well-researched threat that I'll look forward to reading more about in the future.

Jensen does infuse the end of The Rapture with a shred of bittersweet hope for the future, uncertain and difficult as it may be for her characters, and the world.

The other reviews and the Amazon listing are, I think, more than enough to give you a general idea of what this novel is about. Because I do think this novel is worth reading I won't give away any spoilers, or at least none that matter.

The novel is set in the near future, probably around 30-40 years from present day. Not much has changed but environmentalism is seen as something akin to a new religion, though ironically it's also seen by the right-wing religious groups as a sort of atheistic belief structure.

Our main protagonist, Gabrielle Fox, is a wheelchair-bound therapist who channels her not-so-latent hostility into her career as a therapist. Her patient, Bethany Krall, is either a highly unstable psychopath or a sorely confused teenager with an astounding gift (or curse). The story focuses on Bethany's "ability" but often sidetracks into side-stories such as Gabrielle's reminiscing about her pre-wheelchair days, her blooming relationship with a physicist, issues with her career, and more.

As I said, I think this novel is worth reading but I don't want to spoil things by writing too much about the story. What I will say about the story is this: While not terribly unique, its presentation does find a unique angle for delivery which makes the book quite compelling at times.

The writing, however - that is, the technical act of putting words to paper - is debatable. Liz Jensen tends to write in long, heavily syntaxed sentences which often forces you to backtrack and reread sections just so you're sure you've got it all clear. Throughout this is interspersed with little "thought interjections" - simple, abrupt sentences which convey immediate feelings or thoughts or actions. The problem is, these two formats are so often juxtaposed that it often becomes a burden to follow the story. It's like getting into a car and driving down a highway for 10 minutes, then cutting through five minutes of twisty back streets, then ten more minutes on the highway, then five more minutes of back streets, etc. It seems that as soon as you reach your stride, the pace changes. Some authors (Stephen King and Robert Ludlum, for example) can mix these styles with aplomb. Unfortunately Liz Jenson's clumsy attempts sacrifices pacing and readability, but I honestly don't know what the payoff is.

To her (or her editor's?) credit, there are long segments in the book where Liz sticks to a single style and, as such, the story is thoroughly readable and enjoyable, like being on the highway without any traffic or highway patrol to worry about. The parts where Liz gets "creative" with her writing style were enough to make me put the bookmark in and put the book down for awhile.

So, that all being said: The story is not unique but is enjoyable. The writing quality is mediocre at best. Given that the best story in the universe would be ruined by poor delivery, I'm forced to give this book only a three star review - and even that is, I think, generous. I feel that if the quality of writing, the delivery, were improved, this would be an excellent novel, easily worthy of four stars.

My reaction to Liz Jensen's "The Rapture" is one of deep ambivalence. It was a difficult book to plug into; the author chose to begin the story with several pages of over-wrought similes and metaphors (such as "... torn garbage bags that pirouetted in the sky like the ghostly spirits of retail folly"; and "Conservative angels, conscious of their celestial pension constraints and forced to relocate, might choose a town like this to spend their sunset years.") that were so obtuse I was forced to reread them several times before I finally gave up in exasperation and moved on.

Once I finally got into the meat of the story - about a partially paralyzed therapist and her interactions with a violent, matricidal teenaged girl who seemed to be able to predict, or perhaps even cause - cataclysmic disasters on a global scale, my interest deepened and the book became a page-turner. In fact, the writing improved to the point that I could imagine the characters and the apocalyptic plot line forming the basis of a fairly interesting special effects-driven disaster film.

Unfortunately, the author seemed to run out of steam near the conclusion of the tale, and it ended as it began, in a jumble of confusion and impracticality. The climactic sequence, which took place in a huge crowded public arena teeming with people from which only the main characters escaped, was completely improbable, and the somewhat abrupt ending never offered a satisfactory explanation concerning the extent or the source of the teenager's apparent powers.

Looking back over the arc of the plot, my final impression is that "The Rapture" contains the germ of a good idea which its author was either unwilling or unable to fully develop. Maybe a film adaptation can convey in images and sound what Ms. Jensen had difficulty conveying in words alone.

The hint of the paranormal drew me to this book. It grabbed my attention from the first paragraph and held it as though I was mesmerized until the last sentence.

Gabrielle Fox, a psychologist, has just returned to work almost two years after the accident that made her a paraplegic. She has accepted a job at Oxsmith Adolescent Security Psychiatric Hospital. She is given the case of Bethany Krall, a sixteen-year old who stabbed her mother to death with a screwdriver. Bethany is an only child from a family of Evangelical Christians.

As she starts working with Bethany, Gabrielle realizes that her disaster fantasies are really visions of weather events that actually occur on the exact dates she says they will. Bethany has predicted a world-changing cataclysm and her drawings, made after electroshock therapy, provide clues. Gabrielle meets a physicist, Frazer Melville, who starts taking Bethany's predictions and drawings seriously.

On this premise the author tells a fantastic tale, ratcheting up the tension and adding obstacles so that you're wondering how it can possibly end without total disaster. The back cover describes this book as having "gothic intensity." I'd have to agree. There's a heaviness and inevitability about the coming tragedy, the forces working against each other. Yet, almost amazingly, there is hope at the end.

I rarely enjoy books written in the first person. I was halfway through this book before I realized that I was reading one, it's that smooth and almost minimalist. It's told from Gabrielle's point of view and blends her personal tragedy with Bethany's story. Gabrielle's voice is authentic, humorous, and candid in her dealing with her "crippling". She herself doesn't like the word disabled, so I won't use it either. I think I learned more about the practical aspects of being a paraplegic from this book than from anything else I've ever read.

The imagery is powerful. "It was heat to die in, to go nuts or to spawn in. Old folk collapsed, dogs were cooked alive in cars, lovers couldn't keep their hands off each other. The sky pressed down like a furnace lid, shrinking the subsoil, cracking concrete, killing shrubs from the roots up. In the parched suburbs, ice cream trucks plinked their baby tunes into streets that sweated tar. Down at the harbor, the sea reflected the sun in tiny, barbaric mirrors. Asphyxiated, you longed for rain. It didn't come." This is part of the first paragraph. I was hooked.

I cared about Gabrielle, Frazer, Bethany. They were very real to me, in a dangerous and surreal environment of the immediate future. The story doesn't drag, doesn't lose its focus. Each scene and revelation is necessary for the whole to emerge.

One final comment - Bethany's coming from an Evangelical household is critical to the advancement of the plot. The End Days of Christianity are intertwined with the disasters, and the motives of several of the characters are driven by their religion. I'm not Christian and normally don't want to read about Revelations, but this book was so good and the discussions of Christianity and Biblical quotes blended in seamlessly with the action and were necessary for it. Even the title is "Christian", a fact I didn't even really think about as I was reading it. This book is definitely one of my top reads for 2009.

This apocalyptic eco-disaster book started oh so well, but for me, it lost its way.

Set in the near future - the world is very much as we know it, but post a "faith wave" and global warming has continued apace, Jensen sets up a fascinating situation with some very well drawn characters. A psychotic young girl, Bethany, institutionalised for stabbing her mother to death has very specific "visions" of natural disasters following some scary electric therapy. These are very specific and have all come true, but who will believe a young, clearly insane, killer?

In rolls a new therapist (literally as it turns out as Dr Gabrielle Fox is a paraplegic recovering from a car accident) to take on her case after Bethany's last therapist has left in mysterious circumstances. Fox's area of specialisation is in art therapy. Can she reach Bethany?

Bethany's father is a minister in the growing fundamentalist faith movement that awaits The Rapture, when God will save believers prior to the Earth entering natural disasters. Bethany appears to foresee just such an event.

This is a terrific set up and I was enthralled for the first 100 pages or so, wondering how this was going to pan out. Sadly, I suspect that Liz Jensen may have had the same concerns. When Gabrielle meets a physicist, Frazer Melville (who annoyingly is always referred to as either "the physicist" or by his full name - even when they are supposedly in a relationship) and gets him involved, things get murkier. The love story bit is interesting, but it's in the attempts to solve the issues and save the world that it all gets so ridiculously far-fetched that I became so disappointed in the book.

Frazer Melville (oh good heavens, she's got me at it now!) finds a group of like-minded and ridiculously well equipped fellow scientists - sort of ninja physicists - and there are some glaringly obvious gaps in their options. It's plain silly. The ideas are all there, but the execution is just daft.

That said, the characters are well drawn and there are some lovely comic asides, my favourite of which was "the moment is so exquisitely appalling that it could be bottled and sold as a generic life-deterrent".

I'm torn between a three star and a four star rating for this. It's not a bad book by any means, but it could have been so much better. For just plain daftness though (in the guerilla physicists rather than in the nature of the eco threats and religious reactions) , I'm veering to the lower rating.

Year and years ago, I saw a film called The Rapture and thought, Wow! this is good. Some years later, I read Left Behind and was bored. The former was, I thought, a genuinely curious inquiry into what would happen if the Biblical rapture really happened. The latter, while perhaps just as sincere, was dogmatic, not a genuine inquiry but an attempt to proselytize and convert. The former was rich with character. The latter was flat.

Then, a couple years ago, I came across The Annunciation of Francesca Dunn, which asks what might happen if a virgin became pregnant now. This novel, too, I loved. Liz Jensen's "The Rapture" captures the best of the film with the same title and "The Annunciation of Francesca Dunn." It is a Biblical parable wrapped in a scientific what-if scenario with a bunch of characters who seem especially real because they are so deeply flawed.

I won't waste time citing the plot since other reviewers have done so admirably, but I will point out that the ending, while somewhat didactic (albeit in a different direction than "Left Behind"), is powerful and worth getting to.

I'm going to start this review with some cover love. The Rapture has a beautifully effective cover that is both dramatic and eye-catching. It invites you to spend some time exploring it and I was more than happy to take up the offer. The stark black and white image of the young girl with the crashing wave and forbidding sky alongside her ties the main elements of the book together. The forces of nature are also symbolic of the turmoil and danger Bethany represents. This dark background allows the vibrant blue of the girl's eye to stand out and it is the first things I noticed about the book. That blue eye draws you in so that the rest of the cover comes into focus. Something that I found very effective is that what initially looks like light reflecting on the girl's iris, on closer inspection, resolves itself into the continents of the world. This is a great reference to Bethany's "sight" and I love it. The Rapture's cover is a piece of art that is both attractive and linked to the story itself. It is an excellent example of well thought out design.

In The Rapture Liz Jensen presents us with a world on the brink of cataclysmic climate change. The book is set at an undetermined time in the near future and Jensen has taken a growing concern in recent times and brought it front and centre as a very real threat to humanity's survival. It has been speculated that the next great world war will not be fought over land or religion, but rather over dwindling water resources. I applaud Jensen's originality in making climate change the dramatic background against which the story of The Rapture plays out.

In the world of The Rapture two powerful and opposing forces have risen in response to humanity's potential extinction. The first group is the Planetarians - people who believe that our time on this Earth is nearing an end and that all we can do is prepare for the inevitable fate that humanity has brought on itself. The second group is The First Wave - people who believe that the biblical End Times have arrived and that only those who have faith and accept God will be saved. Jensen has clearly put thought into how society will react to the threat of climate change and these groups are the result. I appreciate that in an author. Each group represents an extreme idea and both play an important role in The Rapture, making you think about what your choice would me.

The pace of The Rapture is frenetic and Jensen has used it to great effect to mirror the actions of her characters and the bubbling chaos of the world she has put them in. Jensen's writing is confident and evocative and I was sucked into the story and spun along in its current. She is a talented writer and while The Rapture is not always pleasant to read, she doesn't shy away from difficult topics and guides the reader through the story with skill.

Gabrielle Fox, the narrator, is a complex character. Following a devastating car accident she starts work as a psychologist at Oxsmith Adolescent Psychiatric Hospital as the first step in rebuilding her life. Gabrielle specialises in art therapy and Jensen uses this aspect of her personality throughout the book - from references to broken artists and their paintings to her descriptions. It reminds the reader whose eyes the story is being seen through and gives it a touch of her personality. I found Gabrielle to be a difficult character to like at first because the barriers she has put up against the world are also there in her narration. But as the story progressed I got a better sense of who Gabrielle is and the tragedies and choices that have shaped her. Her interaction and evolving relationship with Bethany expose her strengths and weaknesses, resulting in observable character growth. Gabrielle is not a loveable character but she does connect with the reader which serves to pull you into the story.

Bethany Krall is one of the most believable psychotics I have encountered in a book, even with her prophetic visions. She is a broken person who lashes out in violence and anger at the world. Bethany doesn't know how to interact with the people around her, so seals herself behind a shield of scorn and vulgarity. She is an unsettling character, but I must give Jensen credit for not turning away from disturbing topics and for staying true to the character she has created. But Bethany isn't two-dimensional and through the book she reveals a battered and lonely centre which lets the reader understand her a bit better. Her visions and her absolute conviction in them also give her an edge of mystery, making her an intriguing enigma that readers will want to try and solve.

The Rapture is a thrilling book whose chaotic setting and raw characters will engage you and keep you reading.

Apocalypse and dystopia. Everywhere I look apocalypse--at least on my bookshelf, that is. Everyone seems to be writing about the end of the world, and the scariest part is that none of it seems the least bit implausible.

The latest addition to my apocalyptic reading is Liz Jensen's The Rapture. Once you get past the notably unattractive cover, the first thing you'll notice about this novel is the superiority of Jensen's prose. Right from the first paragraph, it is abundantly clear that you're not reading the average thriller with serviceable language. What's even more extraordinary is that the beauty of Jensen's prose doesn't slow down this thriller one bit.

At its heart, this is the story of three very damaged people and one very damaged planet. The first-person narrator is Gabrielle Fox. She's the new art therapist at Oxsmith Adolescent Secure Psychiatric Hospital. Gabrielle left the bustle of London for this facility in remote Hadport in the wake of her own personal tragedy. It takes some time for all the details to be teased out, but the result, two years on, is that she will spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair. Doctor, heal thyself. Gabrielle is well aware that she has a lot of issues of her own to work through before she's fully prepared to help others.

Nonetheless, she is charged with helping some severely disturbed young people. Perhaps the most disquieting of them all is Bethany Krall. Now 16, Bethany has been locked up for two years since she killed her mother with a screwdriver. She is not cute, and she is not misunderstood. She is a tough, tough character to empathize with, but you can't look away from her.

Bethany has been having visions in the wake of her electro-convulsive therapy treatments. She sees cyclones, earthquakes, and other things she can't possibly know, with very specific details. While at first Gabrielle ignores Bethany's insane babbling, when enough predictions prove correct, she seeks outside opinions. Here enters physicist and expert on natural phenomenon, Frazer Melville (inexplicably referred to by his full name or the appellation "the physicist" at all times). He brings the science--and the romance.

It's fairly formulaic for a thriller to have a romantic sub-plot, but this is a rare example of the romance feeling truly integral to the story being told. The relationship felt organic, and I felt emotionally invested in the characters. Yes, there were times I wanted to slap Gabrielle and yell, "Get over it!" But she behaved consistently as the damaged individual that she was.

There's no need to discuss the details of the plot further, but I was pleased by the insertion of some science into the religious "end times" story. This isn't a Michael-Crichton-style hard science thriller, but it should definitely leave you with some food for thought.