What do you think?
Rate this book
The Rapture
In a merciless summer of biblical heat and destructive winds, Gabrielle Fox's main concern is a personal one: to rebuild her career as a psychologist after a shattering car accident. But when she is assigned Bethany Krall, one of the most dangerous teenagers in the country, she begins to fear she has made a terrible mistake. Raised on a diet of evangelistic hellfire, Bethany is violent, delusional, cruelly intuitive and insistent that she can foresee natural disasters - a claim which Gabrielle interprets as a symptom of doomsday delusion. But when catastrophes begin to occur on the very dates Bethany has predicted, and a brilliant, gentle physicist enters the equation, the apocalyptic puzzle intensifies and the stakes multiply. Is the self-proclaimed Nostradamus of the psych ward the ultimate manipulator, or could she be the harbinger of imminent global cataclysm on a scale never seen before? And what can love mean in 'interesting times'? A haunting story of human passion and burning faith set against an adventure of tectonic proportions, "The Rapture" is an electrifying psychological thriller that explores the dark extremes of mankind's self-destruction in a world on the brink.
352 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
64 people are currently reading
1720 people want to read
About the author
Liz Jensen
25 books226 followersLiz Jensen was born in Oxfordshire, the daughter of a Danish father and an Anglo-Moroccan mother. She spent two years as a journalist in the Far East before joining the BBC, first as a journalist, then as a TV and radio producer. She then moved to France where she worked as a sculptor began her first novel, Egg Dancing, which was published in 1995. Back in London she wrote Ark Baby (1998) which was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Award, The Paper Eater (2000), and War Crimes for the Home (2002) which was longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. She has two children and shares her life with the Danish essayist, travel writer and novelist Carsten Jensen.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 376 reviews
November 27, 2021
Gabrielle Fox ist Psychotherapeutin. Seit einem Autounfall vor zwei Jahren ist sie gelähmt und auf den Rollstuhl angewiesen. Nun hat sie seit ihrem Unfall erstmals wieder einen Job, und ihre erste Patientin ist gleich ein äußerst schwieriger Fall. Bethany ist 16 Jahre alt und hat vor zwei Jahren ihre Mutter mit einem Schraubenzieher getötet. Warum hat sie das getan, und was hat es mit den Vorhersagen auf sich, die Bethany von sich gibt? Bethany kann Naturkatastrophen vorhersagen...
Als ich mit dem Buch begann, war ich noch richtig begeistert. Die Story versprach Spannung und Tiefgang. Ein Buch, das zum Nachdenken anregt. Das ist es auch wirklich, aber für mich hat die Geschichte leider dann ein wenig nachgelassen.
Ich finde es super, wenn die Personen ausführlich beschrieben werden und man sich in sie hineinversetzen kann. Das ist auch hier der Fall, aber teilweise konnte ich Gabrielles Sorgen irgendwann einfach nicht mehr nachvollziehen.
Immer wieder kam hier Gabrielles Angst zur Sprache, niemals wieder Sex haben zu können. Das kann ich ja durchaus nachvollziehen irgendwie, allerdings finde ich es vor dem Hintergrund dieses Buches - der Weltuntergang ist nahe - auch ein wenig unpassend.
Dieser Roman ist nicht schlecht; ich habe ihn gerne gelesen! Ich hätte auch fast vier Sterne vergeben, allerdings gibt es für mich einige Abschnitte, die waren mir zu langatmig, und für einen Thriller hat mir auch manchmal ein wenig die Spannung gefehlt. Daher "nur" drei Sterne. Aber durchaus lesenswert!
Als ich mit dem Buch begann, war ich noch richtig begeistert. Die Story versprach Spannung und Tiefgang. Ein Buch, das zum Nachdenken anregt. Das ist es auch wirklich, aber für mich hat die Geschichte leider dann ein wenig nachgelassen.
Ich finde es super, wenn die Personen ausführlich beschrieben werden und man sich in sie hineinversetzen kann. Das ist auch hier der Fall, aber teilweise konnte ich Gabrielles Sorgen irgendwann einfach nicht mehr nachvollziehen.
Immer wieder kam hier Gabrielles Angst zur Sprache, niemals wieder Sex haben zu können. Das kann ich ja durchaus nachvollziehen irgendwie, allerdings finde ich es vor dem Hintergrund dieses Buches - der Weltuntergang ist nahe - auch ein wenig unpassend.
Dieser Roman ist nicht schlecht; ich habe ihn gerne gelesen! Ich hätte auch fast vier Sterne vergeben, allerdings gibt es für mich einige Abschnitte, die waren mir zu langatmig, und für einen Thriller hat mir auch manchmal ein wenig die Spannung gefehlt. Daher "nur" drei Sterne. Aber durchaus lesenswert!
May 12, 2021
i don't know what my problem is.
for anyone else, this would probably be a four- or five-star book, and looking through my friends list, it seems to indeed be the case. and i am thrilled, because i love liz jensen and she gets very little play in this country - most of her books are out of print, and the last two didn't even come out in paperback here, so i am holding onto these two sad hardcover copies in the hopes that someone will happen upon them and buy them.
there is so much good in this book, but it was just missing something. "what was it missing, karen?? where is your book?? YOU THINK YOU CAN DO BETTER??"
no, i most certainly cannot.
i am no writer, but i am a pretty decent reader. and liz jensen is a fine writer, who usually has this indefinable spark to her writing. a low-level thrum in the underwriting. she is dangerous and funny and unexpected. and there is some of that here, but a lot of this reads like a well-constructed thriller, the kind that they make into a "redefining the genre" movie like The Silence of the Lambs or Primal Fear.it is very good, but it didn't make me dance.
but i don't want to diminish this - she manages some pretty tricky things in this novel. when i was reading/reviewing Ship Breaker, i made a point of mentioning that the global-warming stuff was very nearly off-putting, but he didn't push the button hard enough to make me completely queasy. now liz jensen, she throws her whole body on that button and gyrates around, but for some reason, it didn't bother me. it was like watching my body on an operating table: i was thinking "this should be bothering me, but it isn't."
she has a skill, this one.
and the ending is simply perfect. i will in no way spoil it by saying that there was an easy way out, and a "satisfying" way out, and a "reasonable" way out. and liz jensen took the most complicated choice, the one that was probably the most difficult to write, and wrote it very well. my hat is off to her. she leaves the reader feeling uneasy, which is the best thing she could have done.
i do recommend this book, because it is very good, but in the spectrum of "liz jensen books i have loved," this one is just lower than most.
come to my blog!
for anyone else, this would probably be a four- or five-star book, and looking through my friends list, it seems to indeed be the case. and i am thrilled, because i love liz jensen and she gets very little play in this country - most of her books are out of print, and the last two didn't even come out in paperback here, so i am holding onto these two sad hardcover copies in the hopes that someone will happen upon them and buy them.
there is so much good in this book, but it was just missing something. "what was it missing, karen?? where is your book?? YOU THINK YOU CAN DO BETTER??"
no, i most certainly cannot.
i am no writer, but i am a pretty decent reader. and liz jensen is a fine writer, who usually has this indefinable spark to her writing. a low-level thrum in the underwriting. she is dangerous and funny and unexpected. and there is some of that here, but a lot of this reads like a well-constructed thriller, the kind that they make into a "redefining the genre" movie like The Silence of the Lambs or Primal Fear.it is very good, but it didn't make me dance.
but i don't want to diminish this - she manages some pretty tricky things in this novel. when i was reading/reviewing Ship Breaker, i made a point of mentioning that the global-warming stuff was very nearly off-putting, but he didn't push the button hard enough to make me completely queasy. now liz jensen, she throws her whole body on that button and gyrates around, but for some reason, it didn't bother me. it was like watching my body on an operating table: i was thinking "this should be bothering me, but it isn't."
she has a skill, this one.
and the ending is simply perfect. i will in no way spoil it by saying that there was an easy way out, and a "satisfying" way out, and a "reasonable" way out. and liz jensen took the most complicated choice, the one that was probably the most difficult to write, and wrote it very well. my hat is off to her. she leaves the reader feeling uneasy, which is the best thing she could have done.
i do recommend this book, because it is very good, but in the spectrum of "liz jensen books i have loved," this one is just lower than most.
come to my blog! 
March 14, 2011
I got a copy of this through Amazon Vine, and the only reason why I finished this book is so that I could write a review about the entire thing. I did skim pages in the second half of the book, though, because I don't think I would have made it through otherwise. The subject of natural disaster and climate change is of course very real (just turn on the television these days to see coverage of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan), and could have made for a great eco thriller. However, Ms. Jensen somehow managed to take this subject and write a book that is incredibly boring, and that just left me absolutely cold.
So, what is wrong with this book? Well, here goes:
1.) The style of writing is very cold and distant --- it reads like a very, very dry textbook most of the time. There are passages that aren't quite that bad, but they are few and far between.
2.) Considering that this book has been advertised as a "an apocalyptical thriller that will give you nightmares" it is surprisingly dull. Nothing much happens in the first half, and then a lot of what happens in the second half is just uninteresting. It felt to me that the author really didn't know what kind of book she wanted to write --- a thriller? a religious drama? a study of the human psyche? --- but she failed on all counts. "The Rapture" mostly reads like the screenplay for a really bad disaster movie. Well, maybe not even that because in a disaster movie much more would happen ...!
3.) Gabrielle. She's the lead character --- an art therapist who sits in a wheelchair because of an accident she had not too long before --- and the story is narrated by her. A large part of the book is centered on her insecurities and self-pity, and on her psychological debates with herself. She is constantly stating that she doesn't feel like a real woman anymore because she is in a wheelchair. So don't read this book unless you are prepared to spend *a lot* of time reading about the inner workings of a bitter, jealous, cynical and insecure woman. Gabrielle is mostly just concerned about herself, so I find it hard to believe anyone would let her work as a therapist --- she needs one herself!
4.) The romance. Such as it is. Gabrielle meets a man called Frazer Melville. There is zero chemistry between them, and I personally have no idea why he is attracted to her. I also found it somewhat irritating that she would constantly call him by his full name --- Frazer Melville did this, Frazer Melville said that (even after they slept together) --- or by his profession, "The Physicist" (as in "I wanted to call the physicist to tell him ..."). Very strange. Their romance just did not ring true for me. It felt forced and, basically, cringe-worthy most of the time. Also, once she meets Frazer, Gabrielle becomes completely obsessed with sex. So be prepared to read a lot about that obsession.
To sum it up, "The Rapture" is a badly-written, fairly predictable, and completely pointless book. The story develops *very* slowly, the style of writing requires a lot of patience on the reader's side, and the constant religious and/or psychological babble grated on my nerves. I didn't care about the characters at all, and I certainly didn't care about whether or not any of them survived in the end. In the hands of a better writer this might have been a much better book, but as it is it was a waste of time.
So, what is wrong with this book? Well, here goes:
1.) The style of writing is very cold and distant --- it reads like a very, very dry textbook most of the time. There are passages that aren't quite that bad, but they are few and far between.
2.) Considering that this book has been advertised as a "an apocalyptical thriller that will give you nightmares" it is surprisingly dull. Nothing much happens in the first half, and then a lot of what happens in the second half is just uninteresting. It felt to me that the author really didn't know what kind of book she wanted to write --- a thriller? a religious drama? a study of the human psyche? --- but she failed on all counts. "The Rapture" mostly reads like the screenplay for a really bad disaster movie. Well, maybe not even that because in a disaster movie much more would happen ...!
3.) Gabrielle. She's the lead character --- an art therapist who sits in a wheelchair because of an accident she had not too long before --- and the story is narrated by her. A large part of the book is centered on her insecurities and self-pity, and on her psychological debates with herself. She is constantly stating that she doesn't feel like a real woman anymore because she is in a wheelchair. So don't read this book unless you are prepared to spend *a lot* of time reading about the inner workings of a bitter, jealous, cynical and insecure woman. Gabrielle is mostly just concerned about herself, so I find it hard to believe anyone would let her work as a therapist --- she needs one herself!
4.) The romance. Such as it is. Gabrielle meets a man called Frazer Melville. There is zero chemistry between them, and I personally have no idea why he is attracted to her. I also found it somewhat irritating that she would constantly call him by his full name --- Frazer Melville did this, Frazer Melville said that (even after they slept together) --- or by his profession, "The Physicist" (as in "I wanted to call the physicist to tell him ..."). Very strange. Their romance just did not ring true for me. It felt forced and, basically, cringe-worthy most of the time. Also, once she meets Frazer, Gabrielle becomes completely obsessed with sex. So be prepared to read a lot about that obsession.
To sum it up, "The Rapture" is a badly-written, fairly predictable, and completely pointless book. The story develops *very* slowly, the style of writing requires a lot of patience on the reader's side, and the constant religious and/or psychological babble grated on my nerves. I didn't care about the characters at all, and I certainly didn't care about whether or not any of them survived in the end. In the hands of a better writer this might have been a much better book, but as it is it was a waste of time.
January 7, 2010
I'll admit, I have a tendancy to get a little too engrossed in a good book. 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.
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.
July 19, 2009
While The Rapture isn't one of the greatest books I've ever read, it was an excellent read that gave me characters to care about and ideas to think about. While the story wraps up in a shocking manner, the story itself contains enough ambiguity to leave some things up to the reader's experience and interpretation. Because I prefer ambiguity to certitude in literature, this aspect appealed to me very much. I loved how the relationship between Gabrielle, an emotionally and physically paralyzed therapist, and Bethany, her criminally insane patient, develops.
It was interesting that I got this book as I was reading Dying Inside. In my review of that book, I questioned whether it was science fiction because the author never explores the hows and whys of David Selig's telepathic ability. In contrast, Jensen does explore the hows and whys of Bethany Krall's precognition. For a mainstream book, it contains a lot of science. It explores psychology, geology, ecology and physics. It is definitely science fiction. In comparison, Dying Inside is not science fiction at all.
You may consider the following to be spoilers, so be warned: The Rapture
I have read a lot of post-apocalyptic literature, along with time travel, it's one of my favorite sub-genres of science fiction. This book kind of fits into the genre, but it's pre-apocalyptic instead of post-apocalyptic. Jensen doesn't pull any punches. Once the events that lead to the end are set in motion, there is no miracle salvation. The ending of this story is one of the gutsiest I've seen and it left me gasping. About halfway through the book, I found I had to force myself put it down to get things done. I had to know what was coming next and how it was going to happen. There are so many questions left unanswered because they cannot be answered.
It was interesting that I got this book as I was reading Dying Inside. In my review of that book, I questioned whether it was science fiction because the author never explores the hows and whys of David Selig's telepathic ability. In contrast, Jensen does explore the hows and whys of Bethany Krall's precognition. For a mainstream book, it contains a lot of science. It explores psychology, geology, ecology and physics. It is definitely science fiction. In comparison, Dying Inside is not science fiction at all.
You may consider the following to be spoilers, so be warned: The Rapture
I have read a lot of post-apocalyptic literature, along with time travel, it's one of my favorite sub-genres of science fiction. This book kind of fits into the genre, but it's pre-apocalyptic instead of post-apocalyptic. Jensen doesn't pull any punches. Once the events that lead to the end are set in motion, there is no miracle salvation. The ending of this story is one of the gutsiest I've seen and it left me gasping. About halfway through the book, I found I had to force myself put it down to get things done. I had to know what was coming next and how it was going to happen. There are so many questions left unanswered because they cannot be answered.
May 11, 2021
Ich habe das Hörbuch gehört und mir hat es gefallen, wie Andrea Sawatzki vor allem Bethany gelesen hat. Die Geschichte an sich fand ich als Idee gut, aber die Umsetzung und die "Zwischenmenschlichen Probleme der Hauptprotagonistin" fand ich sehr gezwungen und teilweise offensichtlich in die Irre führend, nur um etwas Spannung reinzubringen.
Also Andrea Sawatzki als Sprecherin hui, der Rest eher pfui,
Also Andrea Sawatzki als Sprecherin hui, der Rest eher pfui,
December 23, 2009
a chapter into Liz Jensen’s latest novel and my mind was reeling and I was wondering what on earth I had gotten myself in for. Unfortunately, the momentum fizzles out about half way and it turns into an amalgam of every disaster/Armageddon movie you’ve ever seen, albeit with more sophisticated language.
The story follows an art therapist, Gabrielle, who is assigned to work with a teenaged girl who has brutally murdered her mother and who believes she can predict the end of the world. In the beginning of the book, Gabrielle is cynical, smart and incredibly frustrated and angry by the way her life has turned out after the loss of her boyfriend in a tragic car crash. Throughout the story more and more details are revealed about the crash and Gabrielle’s own part in it, but instead of getting stronger and more adaptive as the story goes on, the character actually becomes incredibly reliant on others, ending up needy and pathetic and not nearly as sassy as she is in the beginning,
What I did like about the story (aside from the hundreds of rarely used words Jensen stacks in) was the science. The psycho-babble surrounding Bethany and the other inmates of the hospital, the description of Gabrielle’s own injuries and convalescence, and the descriptions of the hazards of global warning are all well detailed and accurate. This is a well researched book.
Is a pity then that when the protagonist starts to fall apart, the entire storyline unravels as well. All the development of the characters in the first part of the book is quickly demolished as Gabrielle becomes unhinged and obsessive and Bethany stops being crazy and just appears as a normal, snarky teenager. The dialogue gets hard to follow and the jumble of time and space stops being clever and simply starts to be distracting and hard to follow. Its as if Jensen didn’t have a plan for the book and was quite unhappy with where it ended up, but unable to turn it around once it got there.
There is of course, a number of apocalypse clichés, including a predictable and unnecessary one right at the end of the book. It’s too neat a wrap up for the story – Gabrielle is mean and tough and then she has a minor breakdown and then suddenly all her pieces just fall in to place just as (predictably) the world is ending.
The Rapture is worth reading just to watch Jensen weave magic with the English language. She is truly a master of the art form and you are guaranteed to add to your vocabulary by the end of the book. But don’t expect a surprise twist in the ending – you can predict what happens next after the first three chapters and the story wearily delivers it up.
The story follows an art therapist, Gabrielle, who is assigned to work with a teenaged girl who has brutally murdered her mother and who believes she can predict the end of the world. In the beginning of the book, Gabrielle is cynical, smart and incredibly frustrated and angry by the way her life has turned out after the loss of her boyfriend in a tragic car crash. Throughout the story more and more details are revealed about the crash and Gabrielle’s own part in it, but instead of getting stronger and more adaptive as the story goes on, the character actually becomes incredibly reliant on others, ending up needy and pathetic and not nearly as sassy as she is in the beginning,
What I did like about the story (aside from the hundreds of rarely used words Jensen stacks in) was the science. The psycho-babble surrounding Bethany and the other inmates of the hospital, the description of Gabrielle’s own injuries and convalescence, and the descriptions of the hazards of global warning are all well detailed and accurate. This is a well researched book.
Is a pity then that when the protagonist starts to fall apart, the entire storyline unravels as well. All the development of the characters in the first part of the book is quickly demolished as Gabrielle becomes unhinged and obsessive and Bethany stops being crazy and just appears as a normal, snarky teenager. The dialogue gets hard to follow and the jumble of time and space stops being clever and simply starts to be distracting and hard to follow. Its as if Jensen didn’t have a plan for the book and was quite unhappy with where it ended up, but unable to turn it around once it got there.
There is of course, a number of apocalypse clichés, including a predictable and unnecessary one right at the end of the book. It’s too neat a wrap up for the story – Gabrielle is mean and tough and then she has a minor breakdown and then suddenly all her pieces just fall in to place just as (predictably) the world is ending.
The Rapture is worth reading just to watch Jensen weave magic with the English language. She is truly a master of the art form and you are guaranteed to add to your vocabulary by the end of the book. But don’t expect a surprise twist in the ending – you can predict what happens next after the first three chapters and the story wearily delivers it up.
September 15, 2010
this is yet another installment of what is becoming a fairly lengthy list of books/authors that i have never heard of that karen has recommended to me.as i've said on goodreads before, she has great literary taste and we obviously like the same kind of books/writng as every single one has been great.and this book is no exception.it has everything you could possibly want from a book...beautiful writing,memorable characters and a gripping plot that makes you not want to put the book down.and it's fairly scary too.liz jensen is a great writer who deserves to be more well known and i'm looking forward to reading other books by her.
Read
June 8, 2023I'm not one for tales of the apocalypse & the destruction of the world but this, although not without its faults had me gripped. In a nutshell a seriously disturbed girl appears to be able to forsee natural disasters. Psychologist Gabrielle Fox, Frazer "The Physicist" Melville & a band of scientists try to alert the world to an imminent disaster in order to save lives.
This story focuses on the weeks up to an event which would destroy the world as we know it & for me that was a key point...do you want to live in a world changed in ways which means that all forms life would be affected & have to adapt - & we' re not talking just getting used to no electric etc! Its happened before, so why shouldn't it happen again?
On the whole I found the storyline credible, interestingly the parts I found less believable weren't to do with the predictions (although I still don't know why Bethany had these visions - if it was all down to the ECT it doesn't explain why her father thought she had the devil in her) but more with the ease in which the group got their act together, ( the arctic "writing" etc) & at times Gabrielle's attitude to her relationship with Frazer was odd. Calling him "The Physicist " irritated me & she was far too ready to believe he was cheating on her with Kristin, she seemed to waver from being a strong independent character to being needy.
A very intriguing read & some parts will stay with me.
" That in terms of the life of this planet, blink & you will miss Homo sapiens altogether. We'll be an irrelevance"
"...the collapse of Homo sapien as a dominant species means the dawn of a new era for a million other life forms"
A scary thought but true - after all why should man be so arrogant as to assume we will "live forever", when to the natural world we are no different to dinosaurs.....
This story focuses on the weeks up to an event which would destroy the world as we know it & for me that was a key point...do you want to live in a world changed in ways which means that all forms life would be affected & have to adapt - & we' re not talking just getting used to no electric etc! Its happened before, so why shouldn't it happen again?
On the whole I found the storyline credible, interestingly the parts I found less believable weren't to do with the predictions (although I still don't know why Bethany had these visions - if it was all down to the ECT it doesn't explain why her father thought she had the devil in her) but more with the ease in which the group got their act together, ( the arctic "writing" etc) & at times Gabrielle's attitude to her relationship with Frazer was odd. Calling him "The Physicist " irritated me & she was far too ready to believe he was cheating on her with Kristin, she seemed to waver from being a strong independent character to being needy.
A very intriguing read & some parts will stay with me.
" That in terms of the life of this planet, blink & you will miss Homo sapiens altogether. We'll be an irrelevance"
"...the collapse of Homo sapien as a dominant species means the dawn of a new era for a million other life forms"
A scary thought but true - after all why should man be so arrogant as to assume we will "live forever", when to the natural world we are no different to dinosaurs.....
August 13, 2009
I had a hard time piecing together a review for Liz Jensen’s The Rapture, an apocalyptic eco-thriller. Though I found the book hard to put down, I also found aspects of it irritating. The story centers around a therapist, Gabrielle, assigned to treat a young murderess, Bethany, and things begin to get interesting after the patient begins to have alarmingly detailed visions of natural disasters--all of which come true.
The story begins as a creepy religious thriller set in a psychiatric facility, so much so that the back of the book bills it as The Left Behind series meets Girl, Interrupted, but to represent this book as anything other then an eco-thriller or even a political suspense novel would be misleading. There are (improbable) scientific explanations for nearly everything. It also took longer then usual for this book to hook me. Jensen does give us detailed accounts of almost everything—down to the smallest details of a throw away scene or action. The result is a lot of stalled action. My other bone of contention lies with the portrayal of Christians themselves. Jensen colors them as irrational fanatics to the point where they become as threatening as a looming tsunami. The inclusion of one sane Christian in the face of so many religious radicals would have been appreciated.
The only reason I was pulled into this book at all was the inspired narrative voice of Gabrielle Fox. Gabrielle is a scientist recovering from a personal tragedy that unsurprisingly gave her a huge crisis of faith. Recently paralyzed her new view of the world forces her to question and mistrust everything around her. Her compelling and skewed view of events saves the novel and perhaps the world.
The story begins as a creepy religious thriller set in a psychiatric facility, so much so that the back of the book bills it as The Left Behind series meets Girl, Interrupted, but to represent this book as anything other then an eco-thriller or even a political suspense novel would be misleading. There are (improbable) scientific explanations for nearly everything. It also took longer then usual for this book to hook me. Jensen does give us detailed accounts of almost everything—down to the smallest details of a throw away scene or action. The result is a lot of stalled action. My other bone of contention lies with the portrayal of Christians themselves. Jensen colors them as irrational fanatics to the point where they become as threatening as a looming tsunami. The inclusion of one sane Christian in the face of so many religious radicals would have been appreciated.
The only reason I was pulled into this book at all was the inspired narrative voice of Gabrielle Fox. Gabrielle is a scientist recovering from a personal tragedy that unsurprisingly gave her a huge crisis of faith. Recently paralyzed her new view of the world forces her to question and mistrust everything around her. Her compelling and skewed view of events saves the novel and perhaps the world.
March 2, 2014
It was really difficult to rate this book because I did like most bits of the first 80% of this book and then it really went downhill for me.
The story is told by an art therapist who was involved in a car accident that left her wheelchair bound. She manages to get a job (before she is ready) at a psychiatric hospital for troubled teenagers and meets Bethany Krall a sixteen year old who killed her own mother.
Bethany claims to be able to predict natural disasters and after some time Gabrielle (the art therapist) is forced to take her claims seriously.
I liked the character formations and the interaction between them - even though both main protagonists (Bethany and Gabrielle) were very annoying at times their actions / feelings were justified by their past and the fast approaching future.
I don't want to give away the ending of the book but I did feel it became bogged down in religious scripture and was not what I would call satisfying.
Other things irritated me like Fraser being constantly referred to as either 'Frazer Melville' or 'the physicist' - yes we know who his is, no need for full name CONTINUALLY!
I didn't really get a proper feel for Bethany at all I'm afraid.
I did manage to finish the book and it was okay but it felt like a bit of a waste of a good idea.
The story is told by an art therapist who was involved in a car accident that left her wheelchair bound. She manages to get a job (before she is ready) at a psychiatric hospital for troubled teenagers and meets Bethany Krall a sixteen year old who killed her own mother.
Bethany claims to be able to predict natural disasters and after some time Gabrielle (the art therapist) is forced to take her claims seriously.
I liked the character formations and the interaction between them - even though both main protagonists (Bethany and Gabrielle) were very annoying at times their actions / feelings were justified by their past and the fast approaching future.
I don't want to give away the ending of the book but I did feel it became bogged down in religious scripture and was not what I would call satisfying.
Other things irritated me like Fraser being constantly referred to as either 'Frazer Melville' or 'the physicist' - yes we know who his is, no need for full name CONTINUALLY!
I didn't really get a proper feel for Bethany at all I'm afraid.
I did manage to finish the book and it was okay but it felt like a bit of a waste of a good idea.
April 1, 2018
Purely on its appeal as an eco-thriller, this book would merit four stars - it's decently paced, grippingly conceived, bleak but engaging, with enough scientifically sound research to back up the plot: Set in an undefined but plausibly grim near future, a cynical, wheelchair-bound art therapist is confronted with a teenage homicidal patient who seems to be predicting impending climate-change-related disasters with terrifying, absolute accuracy. The questions addressed in response by various conveniently principled experts are highly topical: Is humanity, as a whole, worth even attempting to save?; Does it matter, on the massive geological-historical scale on which Homo Sapiens is nothing more than a short blip; Where does religious end-of-days mythology feature into it; and Wouldn't we be doing the planet a favour if we just accepted we're horribly harmful parasites and fucked the fuck off?
You know, current issues stuff.
In any work of fiction I read, I look for good characters, a good story, and good writing, roughly in that order. The story in this was captivating, the writing indifferent but not actively eyeroll-inducing. It was, all in all, decently entertaining. I wanted to know where it was going. I wanted to finish it asap, but for mixed reasons - yes, because I was quite gripped by the story and wanted to know how it would end, but also because I couldn't fucking wait to get this mess over with, to be quite frank. What knocked several stars off for me was the characters. If this had been written by a man, I'd be raking him across the coals for his awful sexist treatment of the female characters. Seeing as this was written by a woman, I'd like to, well, rake her across the coals for her awful sexist treatment of the female characters.
There are four notable female characters in this book:
-Gabrielle, the first person narrator, rendered a T9 paraplegic (ie. fully paralysed from the waist down) after a tragic car accident, who doesn't want your pity, doesn't want to be called disabled, or differently abled, or handicapped, or anything, and just wants to get back to her pre-accident life of dispensing art therapy to psychotic patients despite her self-admitted inability to process her own post-accident issues, and everyone's misgivings about her returning to her job so soon despite her evidently not being ready for it. Fair enough. I was determined to like this chick. She's broken, she's highly intelligent, she's super-cynical. She's a mess but a mess you want to root for.
Right? Nope. It became all too quickly evident that this snarky-but-capable, pessimistic-but-relatable-to survivor was anything but. Gabrielle is narcissistic, self-involved, whiny and self-pitying way beyond the point of the tolerable; the degree to which this is excusable by her recent traumatic life-changing experience is quickly eradicated by her blatant incompetence and downright stupidity when dealing with her end-of-day climate prophet Bethany, a sixteen-year-old, matricidal patient of a mental institution. All of Gabrielle's dialogue in dealing with Bethany is pathetic, the worst kind of clueless therapist babble you could conceive of. She doesn't seem interested in the least in who her patient is, where her psychoses stem from, never mind the absolute accuracy with which she predicts natural disasters. All of Gabrielle's interactions with Bethany are the blandest of "How does this make you feel?" and "I wonder if this is reminding you of anything in your past?" stereotype questions. Apart from her ineffectual interactions with her patient (in which she constantly overreacts, antagonises, transfers, and otherwise is easily and obviouslly manipulated by a fucking 16-year-old), Gabrielle has no personal life because, as she constantly and self-pityingly reminds us, she has no feeling left beneath her waist, so she is only HALF A WOMAN, and any wheelchair dwellers who have any hope or aspirations for their lives are idiots, and no man will ever look at her again, so clearly her life is worthless! ...Except then she meets a man, less an 1/4 into the book, who is obviously into her, and then within no time at all they are fucking like rabbits and her life's purpose is clearly restored, hooray!!! She then turns into a completely brainless, sex-obsessed, needy, whiny, clingy, hysterical idiot whose only concern seems to be whether she can sufficiently orgasm without a functioning lower half (spoiler: she can. WHEW!) ...Except then within a very short period she suspects her man of having sex with someone else and everything in her life (the impending global disaster she knows about via her patient, the resulting worldwide crisis, the issue of humanity's survival, and her own) becomes completely irrelevant to her because clearly the only question of any importance whatsoever is whether her dude is fucking some other chick (in a completely obvious and annoying misunderstanding, he isn't, for the record). This is a first person narrator, so all of the plot, which involves an obviously impending global natural disaster, is filtered through this woman's perspective, and she can't be arsed to give a fuck because oh noes, her boyfriend might, on the flimsiest evidence, be fucking someone else and that is all that matters. Never mind the quite interestingly structured, detailed, scientifically backed-up environmental crisis plot - let's focus on the artificial daily-soap-like drama of this woman's self-manufactured jealousy because bitches be crazy, right? Spare me.
-The second notable main character is Bethany, the psychotic teenage doomsday oracle, who is made up of a string of clichés (she's a religiously raised psych ward resident, so naturally she must be spouting scripture, rejoicing in human suffering, gleeful, malicious, suspected of satanic influences) and bafflingly antagonising characterisation from the main character, who seems to have no professional boundaries whatsoever in dealing with her, stupidly refuses to listen to what she's saying at all times, slut-shames her for no discernible reason (at one point describing her Goth make-up as "darkly whorish" -wtf??) and otherwise slots in place a filter of such stereotyped bias that it becomes completely impossible for the reader to get any real idea of who Bethany actually might be, aside from a convenient plot device. Bitches be crazy, right? SPARE ME.
-The third female character, a side character at best, is Bethany's previous therapist, who eventually came round to believing in Bethany's predictions and ended up being dismissed for unprofessional behaviour. She spends all her on-page time stalking Gabrielle to warn her of Bethany, looking unkempt, wailing and spouting doomsday prophecies and being generally... well, bitches be crazy, right?? FUCKING SPARE ME.
-The distant fourth (and last) female character is a physically perfect Icelandic blonde, fit scientist goddess with absolutely no character profile of her own, who exists solely to manufacture unnecessary jealousy for Gabrielle, who on a complete non-event of supposed evidence believes her to be fucking Gabrielle's boyfriend, which she isn't. That is all. That is the only reason this character exists. She's someone to be jealous of for the main character because... you guessed it. Bitches Be Crazy. COME ON, BOOK. SPARE ME.
In conclusion, this book is a schizophrenic mess. One half of it is a gripping, gloomy, well-plotted eco thriller that I wish could have been given the full scope it deserved. The other half is an offensive, shallow, soapy chick-lit drama that I wish I could have quit.
You know, current issues stuff.
In any work of fiction I read, I look for good characters, a good story, and good writing, roughly in that order. The story in this was captivating, the writing indifferent but not actively eyeroll-inducing. It was, all in all, decently entertaining. I wanted to know where it was going. I wanted to finish it asap, but for mixed reasons - yes, because I was quite gripped by the story and wanted to know how it would end, but also because I couldn't fucking wait to get this mess over with, to be quite frank. What knocked several stars off for me was the characters. If this had been written by a man, I'd be raking him across the coals for his awful sexist treatment of the female characters. Seeing as this was written by a woman, I'd like to, well, rake her across the coals for her awful sexist treatment of the female characters.
There are four notable female characters in this book:
-Gabrielle, the first person narrator, rendered a T9 paraplegic (ie. fully paralysed from the waist down) after a tragic car accident, who doesn't want your pity, doesn't want to be called disabled, or differently abled, or handicapped, or anything, and just wants to get back to her pre-accident life of dispensing art therapy to psychotic patients despite her self-admitted inability to process her own post-accident issues, and everyone's misgivings about her returning to her job so soon despite her evidently not being ready for it. Fair enough. I was determined to like this chick. She's broken, she's highly intelligent, she's super-cynical. She's a mess but a mess you want to root for.
Right? Nope. It became all too quickly evident that this snarky-but-capable, pessimistic-but-relatable-to survivor was anything but. Gabrielle is narcissistic, self-involved, whiny and self-pitying way beyond the point of the tolerable; the degree to which this is excusable by her recent traumatic life-changing experience is quickly eradicated by her blatant incompetence and downright stupidity when dealing with her end-of-day climate prophet Bethany, a sixteen-year-old, matricidal patient of a mental institution. All of Gabrielle's dialogue in dealing with Bethany is pathetic, the worst kind of clueless therapist babble you could conceive of. She doesn't seem interested in the least in who her patient is, where her psychoses stem from, never mind the absolute accuracy with which she predicts natural disasters. All of Gabrielle's interactions with Bethany are the blandest of "How does this make you feel?" and "I wonder if this is reminding you of anything in your past?" stereotype questions. Apart from her ineffectual interactions with her patient (in which she constantly overreacts, antagonises, transfers, and otherwise is easily and obviouslly manipulated by a fucking 16-year-old), Gabrielle has no personal life because, as she constantly and self-pityingly reminds us, she has no feeling left beneath her waist, so she is only HALF A WOMAN, and any wheelchair dwellers who have any hope or aspirations for their lives are idiots, and no man will ever look at her again, so clearly her life is worthless! ...Except then she meets a man, less an 1/4 into the book, who is obviously into her, and then within no time at all they are fucking like rabbits and her life's purpose is clearly restored, hooray!!! She then turns into a completely brainless, sex-obsessed, needy, whiny, clingy, hysterical idiot whose only concern seems to be whether she can sufficiently orgasm without a functioning lower half (spoiler: she can. WHEW!) ...Except then within a very short period she suspects her man of having sex with someone else and everything in her life (the impending global disaster she knows about via her patient, the resulting worldwide crisis, the issue of humanity's survival, and her own) becomes completely irrelevant to her because clearly the only question of any importance whatsoever is whether her dude is fucking some other chick (in a completely obvious and annoying misunderstanding, he isn't, for the record). This is a first person narrator, so all of the plot, which involves an obviously impending global natural disaster, is filtered through this woman's perspective, and she can't be arsed to give a fuck because oh noes, her boyfriend might, on the flimsiest evidence, be fucking someone else and that is all that matters. Never mind the quite interestingly structured, detailed, scientifically backed-up environmental crisis plot - let's focus on the artificial daily-soap-like drama of this woman's self-manufactured jealousy because bitches be crazy, right? Spare me.
-The second notable main character is Bethany, the psychotic teenage doomsday oracle, who is made up of a string of clichés (she's a religiously raised psych ward resident, so naturally she must be spouting scripture, rejoicing in human suffering, gleeful, malicious, suspected of satanic influences) and bafflingly antagonising characterisation from the main character, who seems to have no professional boundaries whatsoever in dealing with her, stupidly refuses to listen to what she's saying at all times, slut-shames her for no discernible reason (at one point describing her Goth make-up as "darkly whorish" -wtf??) and otherwise slots in place a filter of such stereotyped bias that it becomes completely impossible for the reader to get any real idea of who Bethany actually might be, aside from a convenient plot device. Bitches be crazy, right? SPARE ME.
-The third female character, a side character at best, is Bethany's previous therapist, who eventually came round to believing in Bethany's predictions and ended up being dismissed for unprofessional behaviour. She spends all her on-page time stalking Gabrielle to warn her of Bethany, looking unkempt, wailing and spouting doomsday prophecies and being generally... well, bitches be crazy, right?? FUCKING SPARE ME.
-The distant fourth (and last) female character is a physically perfect Icelandic blonde, fit scientist goddess with absolutely no character profile of her own, who exists solely to manufacture unnecessary jealousy for Gabrielle, who on a complete non-event of supposed evidence believes her to be fucking Gabrielle's boyfriend, which she isn't. That is all. That is the only reason this character exists. She's someone to be jealous of for the main character because... you guessed it. Bitches Be Crazy. COME ON, BOOK. SPARE ME.
In conclusion, this book is a schizophrenic mess. One half of it is a gripping, gloomy, well-plotted eco thriller that I wish could have been given the full scope it deserved. The other half is an offensive, shallow, soapy chick-lit drama that I wish I could have quit.
September 27, 2009
Reason for Reading: Apocalyptic fiction is one of my favourite sub-genres.
Summary: It is the not too distant future and the world has entered a new phase, one where global warming has happened and temperatures, weather and climates are no longer what they used to be. Gabrielle Fox is a wheelchair bound art therapist who has started a new job at a Psychiatric Hospital, home to Britain's most dangerous children and she has been assigned the most dangerous of all, Bethany Krall, who brutally stabbed her mother to death with a screwdriver when she was 12. Bethany also predicts the future, not just any future but future natural disasters (storms, earthquakes, etc.) and as Gabrielle realizes each one comes true she begins to believe her patient and feels guilt for not warning the thousands of people who die. A strange bond develops between therapist and patient with the position of authority often switching.
Comments: I'll start by saying I neither believe in the evangelical concept of the Rapture nor that global warming has anything to do with human produced carbon dioxide. These are the two main controversies presented in this book. I will also say that ultimately, I did enjoy the plot; the story of the Gabrielle and Bethany, the predictions and the ultimate race for survival as the apocalypse approaches.
Within this world there are two extremist groups; one The Planetarians who know humans are but a blip in the age the Earth and our time is over as dominant species and nature is taking its natural course as it has over millions of years in the past and a new organism will take our place as dominant species. On the opposite end there is The Fifth Wave, a mass convergence and conversion to Christianity who believe The Rapture is at hand. They strive to bring their friends and loved ones to the Lord so they to may rise above the clouds in the rapture. These people happily await the coming of the rapture. Neither of these extremist groups take a major part in the story until well into the book but near the beginning, being a Catholic, I wondered "well, what about Catholics? The author must know we don't believe in the rapture?" My answer came by page 75 when the main character states during a discussion of disparaging religion is general:
" I was taught by nuns," I tell him. " They couldn't see how tribalistic they were. Or how pagan. As for the traditions, it seems to me that the Catholic Church enjoys just making things up as it goes along. You could almost admire its creativity."
Right, anti-Catholic view expressed, noted and understood. Catholics are not ever referred to again in the book. I was not impressed with the overall anti-religion attitude carried on throughout the whole book. Though I don't share the same convictions as the Christians portrayed here it was insulting the way they were shown as smiling, happy, ignorant people joyfully walking to their probable deaths. No respect was shown when conversation turned towards this group. The reveal that comes out about the leader is cliched and unoriginal. While on the otherhand the leader of the Planetarians is treated with respect, while professional people scoff at his ideology, he is, afterall, a man of science.
I was also underwhelmed by a love affair that happened and felt completely out of place within the story and otherwise out of character for the strong roll Gabrielle was playing elsewhere. There were pages and pages of this romantic misunderstanding drivel that I just wanted to shout "Get over it already!".
Otherwise, the book is well-written, it reads fast. The momentum is there slowly picking up and ending with a crash. Bethany was an outstanding character, the one who really shines through and kept me reading. Even with the religious problems I had, I realized the slant very early on, and accepted it as part of the story. It is fiction after all. I liked the book but didn't love it. I think other reviewers will say they have felt emotional over the book; it didn't affect me emotionally at all. I couldn't see myself as plausibly being in this world Jensen created. However, I do think this book will appeal to many people. The topic of climate change is one many readers will want to explore in this visionary apocalypse of our planet's downfall from human doings.
Summary: It is the not too distant future and the world has entered a new phase, one where global warming has happened and temperatures, weather and climates are no longer what they used to be. Gabrielle Fox is a wheelchair bound art therapist who has started a new job at a Psychiatric Hospital, home to Britain's most dangerous children and she has been assigned the most dangerous of all, Bethany Krall, who brutally stabbed her mother to death with a screwdriver when she was 12. Bethany also predicts the future, not just any future but future natural disasters (storms, earthquakes, etc.) and as Gabrielle realizes each one comes true she begins to believe her patient and feels guilt for not warning the thousands of people who die. A strange bond develops between therapist and patient with the position of authority often switching.
Comments: I'll start by saying I neither believe in the evangelical concept of the Rapture nor that global warming has anything to do with human produced carbon dioxide. These are the two main controversies presented in this book. I will also say that ultimately, I did enjoy the plot; the story of the Gabrielle and Bethany, the predictions and the ultimate race for survival as the apocalypse approaches.
Within this world there are two extremist groups; one The Planetarians who know humans are but a blip in the age the Earth and our time is over as dominant species and nature is taking its natural course as it has over millions of years in the past and a new organism will take our place as dominant species. On the opposite end there is The Fifth Wave, a mass convergence and conversion to Christianity who believe The Rapture is at hand. They strive to bring their friends and loved ones to the Lord so they to may rise above the clouds in the rapture. These people happily await the coming of the rapture. Neither of these extremist groups take a major part in the story until well into the book but near the beginning, being a Catholic, I wondered "well, what about Catholics? The author must know we don't believe in the rapture?" My answer came by page 75 when the main character states during a discussion of disparaging religion is general:
" I was taught by nuns," I tell him. " They couldn't see how tribalistic they were. Or how pagan. As for the traditions, it seems to me that the Catholic Church enjoys just making things up as it goes along. You could almost admire its creativity."
Right, anti-Catholic view expressed, noted and understood. Catholics are not ever referred to again in the book. I was not impressed with the overall anti-religion attitude carried on throughout the whole book. Though I don't share the same convictions as the Christians portrayed here it was insulting the way they were shown as smiling, happy, ignorant people joyfully walking to their probable deaths. No respect was shown when conversation turned towards this group. The reveal that comes out about the leader is cliched and unoriginal. While on the otherhand the leader of the Planetarians is treated with respect, while professional people scoff at his ideology, he is, afterall, a man of science.
I was also underwhelmed by a love affair that happened and felt completely out of place within the story and otherwise out of character for the strong roll Gabrielle was playing elsewhere. There were pages and pages of this romantic misunderstanding drivel that I just wanted to shout "Get over it already!".
Otherwise, the book is well-written, it reads fast. The momentum is there slowly picking up and ending with a crash. Bethany was an outstanding character, the one who really shines through and kept me reading. Even with the religious problems I had, I realized the slant very early on, and accepted it as part of the story. It is fiction after all. I liked the book but didn't love it. I think other reviewers will say they have felt emotional over the book; it didn't affect me emotionally at all. I couldn't see myself as plausibly being in this world Jensen created. However, I do think this book will appeal to many people. The topic of climate change is one many readers will want to explore in this visionary apocalypse of our planet's downfall from human doings.
March 18, 2011
Inhalt:
Als Gabrielle Fox, gelähmt durch einen Autounfall, wieder in ihren Beruf zurückkehrt, bekommt sie gleich den härtesten Fall in der Klinik: Bethany Krall sieht Naturkatastrophen voraus, ist hochgradig gewalttätig und begrüßt die Elektroschocktherapie, mit der sie behandelt wird.
Schreib-/Erzählstil:
Hensen müht sich in ihrer Charaktersierung ziemlich ab, um dem Leser irgendwie Wärme entgegen zu bringen. Die Kunsttherapeutin alias Gabrielle Fox alias Roller, wie sie von Bethany netterweise genannt wird, weil Gabrielle im Rollstuhl sitzt, ist eine verletzbare, sich dauerhaft selbst bemitleidende Frau, die gleichzeitig auf jedwede Hilfe aggressiv reagiert. Andere Charaktere, einschließlich Bethany, wirken wie Pappfiguren, die Jensen notdürftig durch die Geschichte laviert.
Meine Meinung:
Dieser Thriller weckte echte Erwartungen. So sehr angepriesen, dass ich wahrlich Unheimliches erwartete. Bethany – so dachte ich – würde mir Alpträume bereiten. Die Therapeutin würde zweifellos an ihr verzweifeln, aber irgendwas aufbauen. Das ist bis zum Ende nicht der Fall. Und auch die Intimität von Therapiestunden ist nicht gegeben.
Stattdessen gehen alle Ärzte bis aufs Äußerste und behandeln Bethany noch über das vertretbare Maß hinaus, nur, weil man sensationsgeil auf eine Katastrophe ist. Da ist ein Anästhesist ohne Approbation, der erst hilft und dann Schiss kriegt und sich mit einem von ihm verursachten Todesfall herausredet. Peinlich die Reaktion von Fox: Auch sie pocht weiterhin auf die Therapien und kommt nicht ein Mal in der Story richtig durch Bethany.
Mitleid mit Bethany: Ja, weil sie so ein unvorstellbar bescheuerter Charakter ist, der in einer abstrusen Hülle steckt. Geliebt werden will sie nicht mehr, wurde sie nie. Ihre Vergangenheit tragisch – sicher, aber ein Klischee der Thrillerstorys. Nette Geschichte, einen Untergang zu prophezeien, doch diese Tatsache macht sie nicht interessant, sondern verrückt. Sie ist ein Charakter, dem Jensen überhaupt keine Chance lässt, etwas menschlich zu werden. Soll uns das jetzt abschrecken oder die Wahrheit zeigen? Wenn ja, ein durchaus schwacher Versuch.
Fox ist gelähmt und sitzt im Rollstuhl. Natürlich ist das schlimm und ich möchte da gar nichts beschönigen oder von Technologien sprechen. Doch ist Fox ein Charakter, der permanent nervt. Kaum hat ihr Liebhaber, den sie trotz Lähmung, aufgetan hat, eine vermeintliche Affäre, rastet sie aus, besäuft sich und suhlt sich in Selbstmitleid – bis zum Erbrechen. Sorry, aber irgendwie ist sie nicht taff genug. Und zwar die ganze Geschichte über nicht. Sie kann Bethany zu keiner Zeit Paroli bieten. Auf jede Tatsache, die Bethany ihr ins Gesicht schleudert, reagiert Fox trotzig und haut ab wie ein kleines Kind, anstatt sich der Realität zu stellen. Gut, dass die Realität ein klischeebeladener Jensen-Thriller ist, dafür kann ich auch nichts.
Fazit:
Ärzte ohne Grenzen – der Zweck heiligt hier wohl die Mittel. Doch nicht bei mir. Der Zweck, dieses Buch zu vermarkten heiligt nicht das Mittel bewusst gute Werbung zu machen.
Als Gabrielle Fox, gelähmt durch einen Autounfall, wieder in ihren Beruf zurückkehrt, bekommt sie gleich den härtesten Fall in der Klinik: Bethany Krall sieht Naturkatastrophen voraus, ist hochgradig gewalttätig und begrüßt die Elektroschocktherapie, mit der sie behandelt wird.
Schreib-/Erzählstil:
Hensen müht sich in ihrer Charaktersierung ziemlich ab, um dem Leser irgendwie Wärme entgegen zu bringen. Die Kunsttherapeutin alias Gabrielle Fox alias Roller, wie sie von Bethany netterweise genannt wird, weil Gabrielle im Rollstuhl sitzt, ist eine verletzbare, sich dauerhaft selbst bemitleidende Frau, die gleichzeitig auf jedwede Hilfe aggressiv reagiert. Andere Charaktere, einschließlich Bethany, wirken wie Pappfiguren, die Jensen notdürftig durch die Geschichte laviert.
Meine Meinung:
Dieser Thriller weckte echte Erwartungen. So sehr angepriesen, dass ich wahrlich Unheimliches erwartete. Bethany – so dachte ich – würde mir Alpträume bereiten. Die Therapeutin würde zweifellos an ihr verzweifeln, aber irgendwas aufbauen. Das ist bis zum Ende nicht der Fall. Und auch die Intimität von Therapiestunden ist nicht gegeben.
Stattdessen gehen alle Ärzte bis aufs Äußerste und behandeln Bethany noch über das vertretbare Maß hinaus, nur, weil man sensationsgeil auf eine Katastrophe ist. Da ist ein Anästhesist ohne Approbation, der erst hilft und dann Schiss kriegt und sich mit einem von ihm verursachten Todesfall herausredet. Peinlich die Reaktion von Fox: Auch sie pocht weiterhin auf die Therapien und kommt nicht ein Mal in der Story richtig durch Bethany.
Mitleid mit Bethany: Ja, weil sie so ein unvorstellbar bescheuerter Charakter ist, der in einer abstrusen Hülle steckt. Geliebt werden will sie nicht mehr, wurde sie nie. Ihre Vergangenheit tragisch – sicher, aber ein Klischee der Thrillerstorys. Nette Geschichte, einen Untergang zu prophezeien, doch diese Tatsache macht sie nicht interessant, sondern verrückt. Sie ist ein Charakter, dem Jensen überhaupt keine Chance lässt, etwas menschlich zu werden. Soll uns das jetzt abschrecken oder die Wahrheit zeigen? Wenn ja, ein durchaus schwacher Versuch.
Fox ist gelähmt und sitzt im Rollstuhl. Natürlich ist das schlimm und ich möchte da gar nichts beschönigen oder von Technologien sprechen. Doch ist Fox ein Charakter, der permanent nervt. Kaum hat ihr Liebhaber, den sie trotz Lähmung, aufgetan hat, eine vermeintliche Affäre, rastet sie aus, besäuft sich und suhlt sich in Selbstmitleid – bis zum Erbrechen. Sorry, aber irgendwie ist sie nicht taff genug. Und zwar die ganze Geschichte über nicht. Sie kann Bethany zu keiner Zeit Paroli bieten. Auf jede Tatsache, die Bethany ihr ins Gesicht schleudert, reagiert Fox trotzig und haut ab wie ein kleines Kind, anstatt sich der Realität zu stellen. Gut, dass die Realität ein klischeebeladener Jensen-Thriller ist, dafür kann ich auch nichts.
Fazit:
Ärzte ohne Grenzen – der Zweck heiligt hier wohl die Mittel. Doch nicht bei mir. Der Zweck, dieses Buch zu vermarkten heiligt nicht das Mittel bewusst gute Werbung zu machen.
May 5, 2017
I struggled to finish this book and I think my main problem with it is that Gabrielle is a very unpleasant character. She is depressed and miserable through the whole book, and while I understand that she has reason to be it doesn't make it any easier to read 300 pages of her telling us that she thinks she isn't a "real woman" anymore, and moaning and complaining, and making nasty comments about everything and everyone around her.
Nothing escapes Gabrielle's scathing comments, not other wheelchair users, religion, the quality of the red wine in the Indian restaurant someone takes her to, not even Gabrielle's landlady who Gabrielle looks down on because she listens to radio 2.
From the things we learn about Gabrielle's history I get the impression that she wasn't a nice person even before the accident.
Bethany, an inmate of the Psychiatric Hospital where Gabrielle starts working is having predictive visions of natural disasters. Gabrielle very quickly goes from being sceptical to completely believing Bethany, and because Gabrielle is insecure and lacks confidence Bethany gains a lot of control over her.
This would have been more believable if Bethany's manipulations weren't so blatantly obvious and her "craziness" was shown in a better way than Bethany acting like a stroppy and attention seeking 14-year-old teenager.
The best thing about this book - having a main character that uses a wheelchair. This is the first book I've read from the point of view of a person in a wheelchair and I found it interesting to read about how Gabrielle navigates the world with it and the ways it makes her life different to mine.
There are some interesting ideas here but they get bogged down in Gabrielle's endless self-analysis. The last third of the book where Gabrielle finally calms down a bit is far more interesting than the rest, and I flew through the end of it.
Nothing escapes Gabrielle's scathing comments, not other wheelchair users, religion, the quality of the red wine in the Indian restaurant someone takes her to, not even Gabrielle's landlady who Gabrielle looks down on because she listens to radio 2.
From the things we learn about Gabrielle's history I get the impression that she wasn't a nice person even before the accident.
Bethany, an inmate of the Psychiatric Hospital where Gabrielle starts working is having predictive visions of natural disasters. Gabrielle very quickly goes from being sceptical to completely believing Bethany, and because Gabrielle is insecure and lacks confidence Bethany gains a lot of control over her.
This would have been more believable if Bethany's manipulations weren't so blatantly obvious and her "craziness" was shown in a better way than Bethany acting like a stroppy and attention seeking 14-year-old teenager.
The best thing about this book - having a main character that uses a wheelchair. This is the first book I've read from the point of view of a person in a wheelchair and I found it interesting to read about how Gabrielle navigates the world with it and the ways it makes her life different to mine.
There are some interesting ideas here but they get bogged down in Gabrielle's endless self-analysis. The last third of the book where Gabrielle finally calms down a bit is far more interesting than the rest, and I flew through the end of it.
January 10, 2010
Imagine my delight on picking up a psychological/ecological thriller and finding lyrical prose! I appreciate Liz Jensen's ability to turn a phrase, making her book much more than a simple escape. Her main character is compelling, and the way she sees the world is amusing and familiar. She has taken a job working as a therapist for criminally insane children and sitting in her new office, she's deciding whether to put out pictures of her family or not:
"Why give myself a daily reminder of what I have in every other way laid to rest? Besides, there would be curiosity from colleagues, and my responses to their questions would seem either morbid or tasteless or brutal depending on the pitch and roll of my mood. Memories of my past existence, and the future that came with it, can start as benign, Vaselined nostalgia vignettes. But they'll quickly ghost train into malevolent noir shorts backlit by that great worst enemy of all victims of circumstance, hindsight. So for the sake of my own sanity, I apologize silently to Alex before burying him in the desk alongside my emergency bottle of Laphroaig and a little homemade flower press given to me by a former patient who hanged himself with a clothesline. The happy drawer."
I have yet to decide if I find the ending to be satisfying, but the images and prose are staying with me, which must say something.
"Why give myself a daily reminder of what I have in every other way laid to rest? Besides, there would be curiosity from colleagues, and my responses to their questions would seem either morbid or tasteless or brutal depending on the pitch and roll of my mood. Memories of my past existence, and the future that came with it, can start as benign, Vaselined nostalgia vignettes. But they'll quickly ghost train into malevolent noir shorts backlit by that great worst enemy of all victims of circumstance, hindsight. So for the sake of my own sanity, I apologize silently to Alex before burying him in the desk alongside my emergency bottle of Laphroaig and a little homemade flower press given to me by a former patient who hanged himself with a clothesline. The happy drawer."
I have yet to decide if I find the ending to be satisfying, but the images and prose are staying with me, which must say something.
August 21, 2009
A Girl, seemingly troubled in several ways; her strict religious upbringing, her willed yet devastating visions and her lack of family and peer affection.
As you read this, at times you want to love her yet there are times when her vicious tongue makes you want to give her a good slap.
The heroin of the story 'Wheels', is an Art Therapist with the single minded vision to fix the troubled girl. This is poetically achieved as only Liz Jensen can provide.
The Rapture is not about happy endings. It is about forced beginnings. Beginnings that the reader creates in the readers world.... Sorry to be cryptic, but I would ruin the story otherwise.
I have been a fan of Liz Jensen's books for several years. When you inevitably get sucked into the depth and detail of her characters and settings, you can understand why there is always a three year gap between her publications.
If you read this review then I implore you to read 'The Paper Eater' also by Liz Jensen. The Paper Eater is my favorite book of all time.
As you read this, at times you want to love her yet there are times when her vicious tongue makes you want to give her a good slap.
The heroin of the story 'Wheels', is an Art Therapist with the single minded vision to fix the troubled girl. This is poetically achieved as only Liz Jensen can provide.
The Rapture is not about happy endings. It is about forced beginnings. Beginnings that the reader creates in the readers world.... Sorry to be cryptic, but I would ruin the story otherwise.
I have been a fan of Liz Jensen's books for several years. When you inevitably get sucked into the depth and detail of her characters and settings, you can understand why there is always a three year gap between her publications.
If you read this review then I implore you to read 'The Paper Eater' also by Liz Jensen. The Paper Eater is my favorite book of all time.
October 28, 2022
Disclaimer: I have been reading and reviewing for over a decade, and in that time, I have grown and changed a lot. My views in the following review reflect the person I was when I wrote them and may not reflect who I am today - for better or for worse (this review definitely is this, as one of my bullet points is the treatment of Christians). While I would love to be able to reread and update my reviews to reflect who I am today, I think my time is better dedicated elsewhere. If you choose to read this review, please bear in mind this attitude.
NOTE: I received this book as part of the Amazon Vine Program
NOTE: I received this book as part of the Amazon Vine Program
February 17, 2010
I read The Rapture in advance of this week’s TV Book Club; I had no particular expectations of it – and it turned out to be the best book I’ve read so far this year. Certainly, if I’d read it last year, it would have been on my list of favourites for 2009.
A few years in the future, the climate has changed for the worse, and the summer heat is unbearable; religious groups have sprung up, proclaiming that the end times are near. In a town on the south coast of England, psychotherapist Gabrielle Fox is treating Bethany Krall, the teenage daughter of a preacher. Bethany savagely murdered her own mother, and is now being held in a secure institution. She’s a difficult patient – Gabrielle being only the latest in a string of therapists who have tried to understand the girl – but it’s in Gabrielle’s interests to succeed in treating Bethany. A car accident left Gabrielle paralysed from the waist down; Bethany is her chance to prove that she’s still up to the job. What’s particularly unusual about Bethany is that she is apparently able to foresee natural disasters – and she has predicted that the end of the world will come in a matter of months.
The Rapture is narrated by Gabrielle in the first person; her voice is descriptive, measured, and rather cold – for example, she describes her father’s demise from Alzheimer’s in terms that betray no feeling of sadness or loss. She is not a protagonist one can warm too easily, yet Jensen makes her a compelling presence for all that. Gabrielle’s sparring with Bethany is fascinating to read; despite the girl’s violent tendencies and physical superiority over Gabrielle, one senses that Bethany’s greatest weapon is her articulacy. Gabrielle’s profession requires her to be alert to the nuances of language, but now she’s up against someone who knows how to play that game, knows what buttons to push. That’s why Gabrielle feels threatened by Bethany – because the girl can attack her in an aspect of life where she still felt secure.
Jensen’s keen observations don’t stop at the relationship between these two characters. Convinced that she’s never going to be in a relationship again, Gabrielle is unprepared for when she meets Frazer Melville, a physicist who falls for her. We see the complex tangle of emotions that Gabrielle is feeling when Frazer first acts romantically towards her: ‘I can’t handle it. It will kill me. It will kill my belief that I am no longer a woman. No, worse, it will revive the hope that I am, and then all that can happen is that it will be shredded. [p. 112:]’ Even such a positive development is not without its dangers to Gabrielle’s sense of self.
Nor is Jensen’s acuity limited to relationships. When Gabrielle and Frazer discover that Bethany’s prediction of an earthquake was accurate, they have a crisis of conscience – having withheld their knowledge that this disaster would occur, doesn’t that make them complicit in the resulting deaths? But, if they had alerted someone, who’d have believed them? It’s not just that Jensen is examining here the issue of responsibility when one has privileged knowledge; there’s a sense of deep uncertainty over how to handle new kinds of knowledge – Gabrielle and Frazer now know things that others will find impossible to believe; they don’t know the right thing to do because there is, by definition, no precedent on which to draw.
So, I like very much the way that Jensen observes people in her novel; one of the most impressive things about The Rapture is the way that she highlights the personal, human responses against the background of grand catastrophe. What’s also impressive is that the novel works from so many directions, even when they might seem to be contradictory. As I’ve already described, it works well as a character study; in the second half, when the time comes for The Rapture to be a disaster thriller, it doesn’t disappoint there, either. Jensen ramps up the pace, and provides the necessary spectacle and borderline (im)plausibility, leading to an entirely apposite conclusion.
If there’s a weakness here, it’s exactly that – that the text sets itself free of plausibility in the name of storytelling. But that’s the nature of Jensen’s story: it’s what the novel needs at that point, and it’s done with enormous panache. The Rapture is a novel that appeals to the head and the heart, and doesn’t skimp on either. As I said at the start, it’s my favourite read of the year to date.
A few years in the future, the climate has changed for the worse, and the summer heat is unbearable; religious groups have sprung up, proclaiming that the end times are near. In a town on the south coast of England, psychotherapist Gabrielle Fox is treating Bethany Krall, the teenage daughter of a preacher. Bethany savagely murdered her own mother, and is now being held in a secure institution. She’s a difficult patient – Gabrielle being only the latest in a string of therapists who have tried to understand the girl – but it’s in Gabrielle’s interests to succeed in treating Bethany. A car accident left Gabrielle paralysed from the waist down; Bethany is her chance to prove that she’s still up to the job. What’s particularly unusual about Bethany is that she is apparently able to foresee natural disasters – and she has predicted that the end of the world will come in a matter of months.
The Rapture is narrated by Gabrielle in the first person; her voice is descriptive, measured, and rather cold – for example, she describes her father’s demise from Alzheimer’s in terms that betray no feeling of sadness or loss. She is not a protagonist one can warm too easily, yet Jensen makes her a compelling presence for all that. Gabrielle’s sparring with Bethany is fascinating to read; despite the girl’s violent tendencies and physical superiority over Gabrielle, one senses that Bethany’s greatest weapon is her articulacy. Gabrielle’s profession requires her to be alert to the nuances of language, but now she’s up against someone who knows how to play that game, knows what buttons to push. That’s why Gabrielle feels threatened by Bethany – because the girl can attack her in an aspect of life where she still felt secure.
Jensen’s keen observations don’t stop at the relationship between these two characters. Convinced that she’s never going to be in a relationship again, Gabrielle is unprepared for when she meets Frazer Melville, a physicist who falls for her. We see the complex tangle of emotions that Gabrielle is feeling when Frazer first acts romantically towards her: ‘I can’t handle it. It will kill me. It will kill my belief that I am no longer a woman. No, worse, it will revive the hope that I am, and then all that can happen is that it will be shredded. [p. 112:]’ Even such a positive development is not without its dangers to Gabrielle’s sense of self.
Nor is Jensen’s acuity limited to relationships. When Gabrielle and Frazer discover that Bethany’s prediction of an earthquake was accurate, they have a crisis of conscience – having withheld their knowledge that this disaster would occur, doesn’t that make them complicit in the resulting deaths? But, if they had alerted someone, who’d have believed them? It’s not just that Jensen is examining here the issue of responsibility when one has privileged knowledge; there’s a sense of deep uncertainty over how to handle new kinds of knowledge – Gabrielle and Frazer now know things that others will find impossible to believe; they don’t know the right thing to do because there is, by definition, no precedent on which to draw.
So, I like very much the way that Jensen observes people in her novel; one of the most impressive things about The Rapture is the way that she highlights the personal, human responses against the background of grand catastrophe. What’s also impressive is that the novel works from so many directions, even when they might seem to be contradictory. As I’ve already described, it works well as a character study; in the second half, when the time comes for The Rapture to be a disaster thriller, it doesn’t disappoint there, either. Jensen ramps up the pace, and provides the necessary spectacle and borderline (im)plausibility, leading to an entirely apposite conclusion.
If there’s a weakness here, it’s exactly that – that the text sets itself free of plausibility in the name of storytelling. But that’s the nature of Jensen’s story: it’s what the novel needs at that point, and it’s done with enormous panache. The Rapture is a novel that appeals to the head and the heart, and doesn’t skimp on either. As I said at the start, it’s my favourite read of the year to date.
January 29, 2010
"In a merciless summer of biblical heat and destructive winds, Gabrielle Fox's main concern is a personal one: to rebuild her career as a psychologist after a shattering car accident. But when she is assigned Bethany Krall, one of the most dangerous teenagers in the country, she begins to fear she has made a terrible mistake. Raised on a diet of evangelistic hellfire, Bethany is violent, delusional, cruelly intuitive and insistent that she can foresee natural disasters - a claim which Gabrielle interprets as a symptom of doomsday delusion. But when catastrophes begin to occur on the very dates Bethany has predicted, and a brilliant, gentle physicist enters the equation, the apocalyptic puzzle intensifies and the stakes multiply. Is the self-proclaimed Nostradamus of the psych ward the ultimate manipulator, or could she be the harbinger of imminent global cataclysm on a scale never seen before? And what can love mean in 'interesting times'? A haunting story of human passion and burning faith set against an adventure of tectonic proportions, "The Rapture" is an electrifying psychological thriller that explores the dark extremes of mankind's self-destruction in a world on the brink."
I found The Rapture reasonably difficult to get into at first, with it taking until around page 60 for the story to have grabbed my attention properly. The first chapter didn't seem quite real, with the psychotic teenage murderess, Bethany Krall, seeming to me more like a comic book villain than a supposedly accurate character. As you read further into the book though, Bethany's character does become more real and you start to understand her way of thinking more.
At points in the book I found some of the events to be too far-fetched, and perhaps more at home in a fantasy or science fiction genre.
I was a little disappointed when I first started reading this, as I expected it to be different in some way. But saying this, I did really enjoy reading it, and despite it's oddity, I would still highly recommend it.
I found The Rapture reasonably difficult to get into at first, with it taking until around page 60 for the story to have grabbed my attention properly. The first chapter didn't seem quite real, with the psychotic teenage murderess, Bethany Krall, seeming to me more like a comic book villain than a supposedly accurate character. As you read further into the book though, Bethany's character does become more real and you start to understand her way of thinking more.
At points in the book I found some of the events to be too far-fetched, and perhaps more at home in a fantasy or science fiction genre.
I was a little disappointed when I first started reading this, as I expected it to be different in some way. But saying this, I did really enjoy reading it, and despite it's oddity, I would still highly recommend it.
November 2, 2010
Totally gripping.
I was completely engrossed in this book, which I listened to on Audible (unabridged). The book I was supposed to be reading for a book group was only half read by the day of the discussion and I was looking for jobs around the house that I could do with my headphones on!!
Unfortunately a couple of niggling annoyances left it as a 4 1/2 star read. Firstly the constant reference to Frazer Melville rather than Frazer - who uses their whole name all the time? References to him as 'The Physicist' weren't much better. In addition I cringed at the repetition of the lengthy Spanish (Portugese?) phrase related to the painting in Gabrielle's house.
Gabrielle Fox is an Art Therapist on the rebound from a crippling accident that has left her confined to a wheelchair, paralysed from the waist down. This leaves her very vulnerable when she is confronted by Bethany Crawl, a psychotic teenager who killed her own mother by repeartedly stabbing her with a screwdriver. Gabrielle makes a noble attempt to behave professionally with Bethany but the teenager is wise to all the 'psychobabble' and soon sees through her.
Bethany claims to be able to predict environmental disasters and when she is repeatedly correct it becomes more and more difficult to fob it off as coincidence.
The only date that I spotted as I listened to the book was 2012, a date that has been linked to current apocalyptic predictions, making the book even more topical. In addition there is a love interest, in the person of Frazer Melville and a Christian viewpoint, depicted as the Faith Wave, whose members believe the increase in catastrophic events heralds The Rature, when they will be whisked off to heaven and non-believers will be left to suffer.
I couldn't predict how the author was going to end the book but it was spot on from my point of view.
It's a shame that so many people have not enjoyed it so much and it does have its flaws but I'd recommend it without hesitation - off to read more of Ms Jensen's books :)
I was completely engrossed in this book, which I listened to on Audible (unabridged). The book I was supposed to be reading for a book group was only half read by the day of the discussion and I was looking for jobs around the house that I could do with my headphones on!!
Unfortunately a couple of niggling annoyances left it as a 4 1/2 star read. Firstly the constant reference to Frazer Melville rather than Frazer - who uses their whole name all the time? References to him as 'The Physicist' weren't much better. In addition I cringed at the repetition of the lengthy Spanish (Portugese?) phrase related to the painting in Gabrielle's house.
Gabrielle Fox is an Art Therapist on the rebound from a crippling accident that has left her confined to a wheelchair, paralysed from the waist down. This leaves her very vulnerable when she is confronted by Bethany Crawl, a psychotic teenager who killed her own mother by repeartedly stabbing her with a screwdriver. Gabrielle makes a noble attempt to behave professionally with Bethany but the teenager is wise to all the 'psychobabble' and soon sees through her.
Bethany claims to be able to predict environmental disasters and when she is repeatedly correct it becomes more and more difficult to fob it off as coincidence.
The only date that I spotted as I listened to the book was 2012, a date that has been linked to current apocalyptic predictions, making the book even more topical. In addition there is a love interest, in the person of Frazer Melville and a Christian viewpoint, depicted as the Faith Wave, whose members believe the increase in catastrophic events heralds The Rature, when they will be whisked off to heaven and non-believers will be left to suffer.
I couldn't predict how the author was going to end the book but it was spot on from my point of view.
It's a shame that so many people have not enjoyed it so much and it does have its flaws but I'd recommend it without hesitation - off to read more of Ms Jensen's books :)
June 28, 2009
Anyone familiar with the work of JG Ballard will see his influence all over this novel - set, as it is, in an ill-at-ease near-future with, as its protagonist, a psychologist disabled following a car crash. On her return to work at a secure psychiatric hospital she finds herself faced with a violent teenage killer who sees visions of future disasters following electroconvulsive therapy.
The Rapture is more of a literary thriller than a page-turner, as you can tell from its opening paragraph - which is one of the best I've read for a long time:
"That summer, the summer all the rules began to change, June seemed to last for a thousand years. The temperatures were merciless: thirty-eight, thirty-nine, then forty in the shade. It was heat to die in, to go nuts in, or to spawn. 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 vans plinked their baby tunes into streets that sweated tar. Down at the harbour, the sea reflected the sun in tiny, barbaric mirrors. Asphyxiated, you longed for rain. It didn't come."
So right from the start I wallowed in the ominous, is-this-the-end-of-the-world atmosphere. (Is it wrong of me to enjoy apocalyptic thrillers, I wonder?) Unfortunately, as the book progressed, some of characters were not believable enough, and the vague scientific explanation for the cause of those visions was far from convincing, so I felt that The Rapture didn't turn out to be as seriously scary as it promised early on.
The Rapture is more of a literary thriller than a page-turner, as you can tell from its opening paragraph - which is one of the best I've read for a long time:
"That summer, the summer all the rules began to change, June seemed to last for a thousand years. The temperatures were merciless: thirty-eight, thirty-nine, then forty in the shade. It was heat to die in, to go nuts in, or to spawn. 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 vans plinked their baby tunes into streets that sweated tar. Down at the harbour, the sea reflected the sun in tiny, barbaric mirrors. Asphyxiated, you longed for rain. It didn't come."
So right from the start I wallowed in the ominous, is-this-the-end-of-the-world atmosphere. (Is it wrong of me to enjoy apocalyptic thrillers, I wonder?) Unfortunately, as the book progressed, some of characters were not believable enough, and the vague scientific explanation for the cause of those visions was far from convincing, so I felt that The Rapture didn't turn out to be as seriously scary as it promised early on.
July 3, 2015
In the near future, a young disabled psychologist is assigned to look after a genuinely psychotic teenager convicted of killing her evangelical mother. A fairly unpleasant assignment in the best of circumstances, but this girl – Bethany Krall – claims to have visions of the future, and the bizarre thing is they’re all coming true.
Climate change meets faith and religion, meets the end of the world in this horror/sci-fi tale that leans a little more towards John Wyndham than J.G. Ballard in the British apocalyptic stakes. The dreamy prose style might initially put a reader off, but it’s worthwhile persevering – even if it does end up with an overly-charged, melodramatic conclusion which doesn’t really do justice to all that went before.
At the centre are two really good female characters: Gabrielle Fox, recently confined to a wheelchair and finding it difficult to cope, despite her outer confidence; and Bethany Krall – the real stand-out presence of the book – an absolutely convincing psychopath, whose madness is horribly off-putting, but also a way for her to make connection with her fellow man. Okay, everyone else is a bit flat and cardboard – but most of the book is about the central pair, and so we can cope with a little 2D when Gabrielle and Bethany are so three-dimensional.
Some of the notions Jenson raises don’t really go anywhere, for example: is Bethany not merely predicting these catastrophes, but actually causing them a la Richard Burton in ‘The Medusa Touch’? (Sorry, a gratuitous reference just for fans of bad 1970’s British horror films.) But then if a reader is picking up a novel of ideas, then it is certainly better to have too many than too few.
Climate change meets faith and religion, meets the end of the world in this horror/sci-fi tale that leans a little more towards John Wyndham than J.G. Ballard in the British apocalyptic stakes. The dreamy prose style might initially put a reader off, but it’s worthwhile persevering – even if it does end up with an overly-charged, melodramatic conclusion which doesn’t really do justice to all that went before.
At the centre are two really good female characters: Gabrielle Fox, recently confined to a wheelchair and finding it difficult to cope, despite her outer confidence; and Bethany Krall – the real stand-out presence of the book – an absolutely convincing psychopath, whose madness is horribly off-putting, but also a way for her to make connection with her fellow man. Okay, everyone else is a bit flat and cardboard – but most of the book is about the central pair, and so we can cope with a little 2D when Gabrielle and Bethany are so three-dimensional.
Some of the notions Jenson raises don’t really go anywhere, for example: is Bethany not merely predicting these catastrophes, but actually causing them a la Richard Burton in ‘The Medusa Touch’? (Sorry, a gratuitous reference just for fans of bad 1970’s British horror films.) But then if a reader is picking up a novel of ideas, then it is certainly better to have too many than too few.
December 8, 2015
I'm a huge fan of post-apocalyptic, disaster type, end of the world stories. Whether it's nuclear, environmental, plague or aliens, there's something almost cathartic in reading about it. But while this book started off with them same premise, it had one thing different about it - the story isn't about surviving the end of the world - it's about excepting it's going to happen.
The story focuses on a disabled therapist, who has yet to come to terms with living in a wheelchair, and her disturbed patient, Bethany, who not only killed her mother but seems to be able to predict weather related disasters after having electro-shock treatments. A small group of people come to believe her and, whether she is actually to blame or just knows they're going to happen, they try to warn people when the one huge catastrophe hits - the one that is likely to wipe out the human race.
I liked the characters - none of which are whiter than white. They all have faults and are downright nasty in places. The idea of acceptance, whether of a personal change or in what is happening around you, is not one usually bandied around - we all like to think we have the ability to change our life. Maybe that is what the author is trying to say, in a roundabout way - changes have to be made sooner rather than later, as all we can do at the end is accept.
The religious aspects are interesting, if in some ways just a back drop to the story. I also couldn't help but compare this to 'Portent' by James Herbert, which has a similar slant, although the Earth in that novel is a far more benevolent entity that the one here.
A great read - recommended.
The story focuses on a disabled therapist, who has yet to come to terms with living in a wheelchair, and her disturbed patient, Bethany, who not only killed her mother but seems to be able to predict weather related disasters after having electro-shock treatments. A small group of people come to believe her and, whether she is actually to blame or just knows they're going to happen, they try to warn people when the one huge catastrophe hits - the one that is likely to wipe out the human race.
I liked the characters - none of which are whiter than white. They all have faults and are downright nasty in places. The idea of acceptance, whether of a personal change or in what is happening around you, is not one usually bandied around - we all like to think we have the ability to change our life. Maybe that is what the author is trying to say, in a roundabout way - changes have to be made sooner rather than later, as all we can do at the end is accept.
The religious aspects are interesting, if in some ways just a back drop to the story. I also couldn't help but compare this to 'Portent' by James Herbert, which has a similar slant, although the Earth in that novel is a far more benevolent entity that the one here.
A great read - recommended.
August 12, 2009
I am still undecided about this novel - it has a great premise and two great characters - the narrator is a wheelchair bound psychologist after an accident which killed her boyfriend and with lots of issues and secrets of her own - and a teenager who is imprisoned in a high security children ward on the edge of England who killed her mother by stabbing her with a screwdriver tens of times
All happens in a near future which is even more unsettled than today and the girl's father is a famous reverend of a revivalist Church that is gaining more and more influence; oh, and the girl Bethany who is now addicted to electro-shocks can predict natural disasters with uncanny accuracy but of course nobody believes her
The first 1/2 of the novel is superb, dark, cynical, great interaction between the characters and great suspense; once things start moving though, the novel becomes a predictable run of the mill apocalyptic thriller in the current fashion and the voice of the narrator becomes very shrill, understandably so to some extent, pressure and all, but grating nonetheless
Definitely recommended, but need some time to settle for a final evaluation; the style reminded me for a while about the superb Gargoyle by A. Davidson, but that one delivered to the end, while this one sort of lost my interest toward the end when the suspense was supposed to be building, I was yawning...
All happens in a near future which is even more unsettled than today and the girl's father is a famous reverend of a revivalist Church that is gaining more and more influence; oh, and the girl Bethany who is now addicted to electro-shocks can predict natural disasters with uncanny accuracy but of course nobody believes her
The first 1/2 of the novel is superb, dark, cynical, great interaction between the characters and great suspense; once things start moving though, the novel becomes a predictable run of the mill apocalyptic thriller in the current fashion and the voice of the narrator becomes very shrill, understandably so to some extent, pressure and all, but grating nonetheless
Definitely recommended, but need some time to settle for a final evaluation; the style reminded me for a while about the superb Gargoyle by A. Davidson, but that one delivered to the end, while this one sort of lost my interest toward the end when the suspense was supposed to be building, I was yawning...
October 2, 2016
This was one of the many books on the Denver library climate lit list that I keep taking out, failing to read before the expiration date and renewing because I have two children and 25 books at a time over 22 days would have been challenging even that portion of the year that I didn't have internet or tv at home. And yet, the cycle continues.
This one I really, really enjoyed. Especially that bit at the end that I can't share but was a refreshingly pessimistic ending. It's got a crazy mix of extreme religion, science and a teen in a mental health facility. The relationship between Gabrielle and the physicist was well done I thought.
This one I really, really enjoyed. Especially that bit at the end that I can't share but was a refreshingly pessimistic ending. It's got a crazy mix of extreme religion, science and a teen in a mental health facility. The relationship between Gabrielle and the physicist was well done I thought.
November 8, 2022
I have been meaning to read this book for some time but now I have finally been able to correct that.
As the title of the book suggests it is all about the apocalyptic events which engulf a slowly growing number of characters.
Its hard to pin this book down - is it a warning of ecological disaster, it is an exploration of a woman crippled (both physically and mentally) from an accident rebuilding her life or is it the witnessing of a disturbed girls descent in to madness where cause and effect are blurred.
In the end you have a compelling story with many interesting characters as this is most certainly a character driven story. However there are some interesting concepts explored in this book from the obvious (and trust me some come and practically hit you over the head) to others which are far more subtle to the point where I wonder if I am reading too much in to this book.
So yes this is one of those titles that certainly send you way pondering things.
As the title of the book suggests it is all about the apocalyptic events which engulf a slowly growing number of characters.
Its hard to pin this book down - is it a warning of ecological disaster, it is an exploration of a woman crippled (both physically and mentally) from an accident rebuilding her life or is it the witnessing of a disturbed girls descent in to madness where cause and effect are blurred.
In the end you have a compelling story with many interesting characters as this is most certainly a character driven story. However there are some interesting concepts explored in this book from the obvious (and trust me some come and practically hit you over the head) to others which are far more subtle to the point where I wonder if I am reading too much in to this book.
So yes this is one of those titles that certainly send you way pondering things.
July 29, 2009
When I was in middle school, we lived in Dallas, Texas. One of the things I remember vividly from living there was a huge billboard of what Dallas will be like at The Rapture. A huge Jesus towers over the skyline & souls are wafted to heaven from the cars moving along through the rush hour freeway traffic. To be honest I went back & forth about requesting this book for review because the title led me to believe it might be like that billboard & that's just not my thing. Turns out, it's not Liz Jensen's thing, either.
The Rapture is a literary eco-thriller. The plotting is good, the characters feel real, the situation feels absolutely plausible, & as a reader you care what happens.
The strength of this novel lies in the two main characters who are both real & heartbreaking. Bethany Krall is a disturbed teenager institutionalized after she kills her mother with a screwdriver. Gabrielle Fox is an art therapist assigned to Bethany's case. Bethany is eerily correct in her predictions of natural disasters. Gabrielle is newly paraplegic, dealing with the consequences of an accident that has shattered her world.
I appreciated just how crazy Ms. Jensen allowed Bethany to be. So often when dealing with mental illness in adolescents writers give us watered down versions of depressed adolescents or abused drug addicts that we can all relate to & feel sorry for or good about. If you want to understand how far outside the norm children & teens who are institutionalized with psychiatric disorders are, just think about how broad the behavioral permissions are for kids & teens & then imagine what someone who falls far outside of that norm might be like. Ms. Jensen has done that with Bethany & she is frightening & real & pitiable &, in the end, admirable.
The heartbeat of this book is the narration of Gabrielle Fox who is trying to do her job, to live her life, & to sort out what being paraplegic is going to mean for her life. She is intelligent & ironic & self-pitying & often very funny. Thrust into a wheelchair, her dealings with Bethany & her predictions combine with her daily struggles to create a narrative that is both moving & entertaining.
There are images here that are unforgettable - the Christ statue in Rio de Janeiro toppling over after a hurricane, miles of dead jellyfish, graffiti only readable by satellite written in luminescent dye from the crushed shells of crustaceans, the faithful gathered in a stadium (reminiscent of the Superdome in New Orleans) waiting for the Rapture that never arrives. The world may end with a great big bang, but some of us may survive it - not a comforting thought in these days of increasing global warming & economic meltdown.
The Rapture is a literary eco-thriller. The plotting is good, the characters feel real, the situation feels absolutely plausible, & as a reader you care what happens.
The strength of this novel lies in the two main characters who are both real & heartbreaking. Bethany Krall is a disturbed teenager institutionalized after she kills her mother with a screwdriver. Gabrielle Fox is an art therapist assigned to Bethany's case. Bethany is eerily correct in her predictions of natural disasters. Gabrielle is newly paraplegic, dealing with the consequences of an accident that has shattered her world.
I appreciated just how crazy Ms. Jensen allowed Bethany to be. So often when dealing with mental illness in adolescents writers give us watered down versions of depressed adolescents or abused drug addicts that we can all relate to & feel sorry for or good about. If you want to understand how far outside the norm children & teens who are institutionalized with psychiatric disorders are, just think about how broad the behavioral permissions are for kids & teens & then imagine what someone who falls far outside of that norm might be like. Ms. Jensen has done that with Bethany & she is frightening & real & pitiable &, in the end, admirable.
The heartbeat of this book is the narration of Gabrielle Fox who is trying to do her job, to live her life, & to sort out what being paraplegic is going to mean for her life. She is intelligent & ironic & self-pitying & often very funny. Thrust into a wheelchair, her dealings with Bethany & her predictions combine with her daily struggles to create a narrative that is both moving & entertaining.
There are images here that are unforgettable - the Christ statue in Rio de Janeiro toppling over after a hurricane, miles of dead jellyfish, graffiti only readable by satellite written in luminescent dye from the crushed shells of crustaceans, the faithful gathered in a stadium (reminiscent of the Superdome in New Orleans) waiting for the Rapture that never arrives. The world may end with a great big bang, but some of us may survive it - not a comforting thought in these days of increasing global warming & economic meltdown.
December 26, 2012
A convincing, superbly written eco-thriller
German Review:
Die britische Psychologin Gabrielle ist in einen neuen Ort gezogen und hat einen neuen Job. Sie soll den Fall der jugendlichen Bethany Krall übernehmen, die 2 Jahre zuvor ihre Mutter brutal getötet hat. Bethany ist abweisend, ja feindselig und offenbar wirklich gefährlich. Doch schon bald entdeckt Gabrielle, dass Bethany eine unheimliche Fähigkeit hat, Naturkatastrophen vorherzusagen…
Die Geschichte um die Psychologin Gabrielle und ihre Patientin Bethany spielt in einer nahen Zukunft – die Klimaerwärmung ist weiter fortgeschritten, im Iran herrscht Krieg und es hat eine Welle religiösen Fanatismus in westlichen Welt gegeben. Wir erfahren bald, dass Gabrielle seit einem schrecklichen Unfall querschnittsgelähmt ist und die Ereignisse noch nicht wirklich verarbeitet hat. Erst im Laufe des Buches wird deutlich, was Gabrielle da alles widerfahren ist. Das Gefühlsleben einer nach einem Unfall gelähmten Person wird während des ganzen Buches aufgearbeitet, unter anderem auch das Thema Sexualität. Das andere wichtige Thema des Buchs ist die Klimakatastrophe und Naturkatastrophen wie Erdbeben, die Bethany präzise vorhersagt, unter anderem auch das lange erwartete große Erdbeben in Istanbul. Doch so schrecklich diese Katastrophen auch sind, sind sie nichts im Vergleich zu einem verheerenden Großereignis, das Bethany vorhersagt und das menschliche Leben auf dem ganzen Planeten betreffen könnte… Das sind Themen, die mich persönlich sehr beschäftigen, daher konnte das Buch mich wirklich fesseln. Die Theorien, die im Buch aufgestellt werden, wirken auf mich plausibel. Die Spannung bleibt ganz bis zum Schluss erhalten und das Ende fand ich überzeugend. Der Roman hat mir besonders in sprachlicher Hinsicht sehr gut gefallen, wirklich ein Genuss. Mein einziger Kritikpunkt ist das zeitweilig etwas paranoide Verhalten von Gabrielle, einige Passagen lang hat sie mich wirklich genervt. Das tut aber der Tatsache keinen Abbruch, dass Liz Jensen da einen überzeugenden und unterhaltsamen Öko-Thriller mit Tiefgang vorgelegt hat. Ich freue mich auf mehr von dieser Autorin!
German Review:
Die britische Psychologin Gabrielle ist in einen neuen Ort gezogen und hat einen neuen Job. Sie soll den Fall der jugendlichen Bethany Krall übernehmen, die 2 Jahre zuvor ihre Mutter brutal getötet hat. Bethany ist abweisend, ja feindselig und offenbar wirklich gefährlich. Doch schon bald entdeckt Gabrielle, dass Bethany eine unheimliche Fähigkeit hat, Naturkatastrophen vorherzusagen…
Die Geschichte um die Psychologin Gabrielle und ihre Patientin Bethany spielt in einer nahen Zukunft – die Klimaerwärmung ist weiter fortgeschritten, im Iran herrscht Krieg und es hat eine Welle religiösen Fanatismus in westlichen Welt gegeben. Wir erfahren bald, dass Gabrielle seit einem schrecklichen Unfall querschnittsgelähmt ist und die Ereignisse noch nicht wirklich verarbeitet hat. Erst im Laufe des Buches wird deutlich, was Gabrielle da alles widerfahren ist. Das Gefühlsleben einer nach einem Unfall gelähmten Person wird während des ganzen Buches aufgearbeitet, unter anderem auch das Thema Sexualität. Das andere wichtige Thema des Buchs ist die Klimakatastrophe und Naturkatastrophen wie Erdbeben, die Bethany präzise vorhersagt, unter anderem auch das lange erwartete große Erdbeben in Istanbul. Doch so schrecklich diese Katastrophen auch sind, sind sie nichts im Vergleich zu einem verheerenden Großereignis, das Bethany vorhersagt und das menschliche Leben auf dem ganzen Planeten betreffen könnte… Das sind Themen, die mich persönlich sehr beschäftigen, daher konnte das Buch mich wirklich fesseln. Die Theorien, die im Buch aufgestellt werden, wirken auf mich plausibel. Die Spannung bleibt ganz bis zum Schluss erhalten und das Ende fand ich überzeugend. Der Roman hat mir besonders in sprachlicher Hinsicht sehr gut gefallen, wirklich ein Genuss. Mein einziger Kritikpunkt ist das zeitweilig etwas paranoide Verhalten von Gabrielle, einige Passagen lang hat sie mich wirklich genervt. Das tut aber der Tatsache keinen Abbruch, dass Liz Jensen da einen überzeugenden und unterhaltsamen Öko-Thriller mit Tiefgang vorgelegt hat. Ich freue mich auf mehr von dieser Autorin!
November 19, 2013
The Rapture is supposed to be the story of a teenage girl, Bethany Krall, who is locked up in a mental institution after murdering her mother and who seemingly receives apocalyptic visions of the future. It was this concept that attracted me to the book. However, the story is told from the point of view of Bethany's therapist, Gabrielle who just happens to be paralysed from the waist down after a car accident and most of the narrative is taken up with bitter ravings and back story that are totally irrelevant to the main plot. In fact, the story would remain largely unchanged if the character had been able to walk. Although it was nice to have a wheelchair bound protagonist for a change, I would have hoped for her to have a stronger personality - someone who has overcome and adjusted to their disability as opposed to making it a frame of reference by which to judge every little thing that she encounters throughout the book.
The pacing of the book was quite slow and the ending was largely disappointing. In fact, I find it difficult to pinpoint anything about it that I did like, but something dragged me through to the end. I think I'd use the word 'pointless' to sum up this book. I'm not sure what the author was trying to achieve other than an utter sense of hopelessness which is not what I'd look for in a novel.
The pacing of the book was quite slow and the ending was largely disappointing. In fact, I find it difficult to pinpoint anything about it that I did like, but something dragged me through to the end. I think I'd use the word 'pointless' to sum up this book. I'm not sure what the author was trying to achieve other than an utter sense of hopelessness which is not what I'd look for in a novel.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 376 reviews