The Rapture

by Patrick Harpur

Details the progress of an autistic and severely damaged nine-year-old called Mikey, as Ruth, his nurse, struggles to cope with both the demands of her role in his recovery and her own growing attachment to him. Ruth’s story is cut with those of Mikey’s rich and inadequate parents and an adult patient at the Unit where she cares for the boy. Harry believes he’s living in the last degenerate and desolate days before the Rapture, when God will gather the chosen ones and transport them to heaven before destroying the world and creating it anew.

Hardcover

First published June 5, 1986

About the author

Patrick Harpur is an acclaimed author, best known for his philosophical works, which include The Philosophers' Secret Fire: A History Of The Imagination and Mercurius: The Marriage Of Heaven and Earth , the latter of which, after being out of print for several years (and fetching a small fortune on auction sites like eBay) has finally been re-released in a paperback edition.

Other works include Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Otherworld and The Serpent's Circle .

He currently has a couple of new projects in the pipeline, including The Stormy Petrel, a fictional biography of Søren Kirkegaard, and The Savoy Truffle, a witty, dramatic novel about life in Britain's richest, wildest Surrey suburb in the early 1960s.

Patrick Harpur lives near Dorchester in Dorset.

Reviews

[Liz Kirsopp · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was completely absorbed in this book for the first 3/4 of it. I lived and worked in mental hospitals around London at about the time that this book is set and it felt wonderfully familiar. The main characters are carefully and sympathetically drawn. And the plot is not at all predictable.
Sadly the last quarter of the book is quite unpleasant and doesn’t even add up plot wise. A great pity.