The Rapture (Unabridged) [Audio Download]

Gabrielle Fox, the main character, is unlike any other heroine I have read about. She is very vulnerable after having survived a traumatic car accident. Her career as a psychotherapist leads her to a job in a psychiatric hospital for troubled teenagers. There she meets Bethany, a 16 year old who has murdered her own mother and who also seems able to predict natural disasters. Gabrielle has the task of discovering if Bethany really can tell the future or whether she is a very talented manipulator. Even given Bethany's crime and appalling attitude, I found myself warming to her character. The fact that she comes from an Evangelical background, her father being a preacher man, is crucial to the plot. As an open-minded atheist I found the religious thread that runs through this story absolutely fascinating. I feel that whatever your thoughts on the Bible stories, this book will give you some intelligent food for thought. There is a lot of technical talk, but don't be put off by this as most of it can easily be understood by the context.

The author has included a note at the end of The Rapture in which she explains the intent behind her story. Jensen's writing is so eloquent that I was compelled to discover how the story ends, what would become of Bethany and uncover exactly how she knew of the forthcoming disasters. Along the way I felt the pain and emotional traumas that both Gabrielle and Bethany suffer. Both are fragile in their own ways and in need of love and care. This is a hard hitting topical storyline that made me sit up and listen to the message that Jensen is trying to get across. The ending blew me away and left me feeling that we really must pull together as a race and look after our planet.

To sum up, this is a captivating apocalyptic thriller set in the very near future. It's an extremely intelligent piece of work from Jensen, and she must have put in an incredible amount of hours of research to create a terrifyingly plausible storyline in The Rapture. It was a haunting read and one that I will be thinking about for a long time.

'That summer, the summer all the rules began to change, June seemed to last for a thousand years'.

The novel opens with a masterly evocation of a desperately hot summer when 'the sky pressed down like a furnace lid'. It's the near future and weather disasters are becoming far more frequent as the weather becomes increasingly unpredictable. Except it seems that someone may be able to predict the weather disasters... Gabrielle Fox's adolescent psychiatric patient Bethany Krall seems to be tuned into weather after her ECT treatment. Gabrielle has had a break from work after the car accident which killed her lover and left her in a wheelchair. She is vulnerable to Bethany's taunts of 'Wheels' but is starting to rebuild her life with the new job and new man Dr Frazer Melville.

Jensen interweaves her eco/psychological thriller with a love story and juxtaposes the scientific reaction to the apocalyptic conditions with the religious response of 'The Rapture'.

For me, she managed all of these strands very well. I read the novel in one sitting and was surprised that I hadn't hear of so skilful an author before. Since then the book has been chosen for Radio 4's Book at Bedtime and seems set for commercial success.

Rapture is an odd novel. It was recommended to me as part of the Channel 4 Good Read series, so I thought I'd give it a go.

At first, the protagonist character was very intriguing. Gabrielle is recovering from a horrific car accident in which her lover died and she became paralysed from the base of her spine down. Her family is on disarray - estranged from brother Pierre, and her father has slid into Alzheimers. Gabrielle has moved to Hadport to start a new life as a psychologist in a home for criminally insane children.

It is here that she meets Bethany Krall, guilty of matricide yet able to predict natural disasters with unswerving accuracy. Bethany is a hard character to fathom. It is only in the final chapters of this book that Bethany stops being a 2 dimensional typical troubled teen rebel and becomes a character one can empathise with.

This book is confusing and flawed. Bethany predicts earthquakes and floods that happen within days, and is also able to sense things about people that later turn out to be true. She makes some statements about Dr Fraser Melville that cast doubts about his loyalty and integrity. Later in the novel, it is implied but not stated that these allegations are untrue. Why would only this one of Bethany's predictions and assertions prove false, when on every other count she has spoken the truth?

The physicists that band together in the novel to 'save the day' are an odd bunch. Luckily they have access to all manner of equipment and people in high places (helicopters notwithstanding). They are able to plan and carry out complex and partially criminal escapades, yet they cannot go ahead without the help of Gabrielle. It seems far too unrealistic and convenient.

The redeeming feature of this novel is the way that the author weaves religious themes into the latter stages of the plot. Sadly the end (set in the Olympic stadium) is very unrealistic and contrived, and lets the novel down again.