The Vanishings [Mass Market Paperback]

First of all, the basic premise goes against one of Christianity's core ideas. Namely, that we all have a soul and our soul departs our bodies when we die, to go either to heaven or hell. (Or just to heaven, in some congregations.) So if all the people who are Raptured are taken to heaven, and if heaven is a place for SOULS, why are their bodies taken too? Why are their souls not simply sucked out, leaving empty corpses? In the book, the author specifically mentions a group of pallbearers who disappeared, only to drop the coffin which popped open to reveal the dead body gone too. This raises many questions.

First, if the dead man was already in heaven, why was his body Raptured?

Second, if this happens to every dead Christian going all the way back to the time of Christ, do the remains of THEIR bodies get Raptured too? If they're already almost completely decomposed, what good is a pile of old bones and soil?
Third, if you need your physical body in heaven (which, once again, goes against basic Christian beliefs, not to mention common sense) wouldn't you also need your hearing aid and contact lenses? (See page 111.)

But despite its ridiculous premise, "The Vanishings" manages to also be horribly written. The entire book reads like a synopsis of itself - and it's just short enough to be just that. Jenkins skids through the plot with tires squealing, skipping over such unnecessary details as character development, dialogue, and description. I got whiplash just reading it. But to be fair, it was very entertaining whiplash.

Possibly the funniest element of this book is, it gets quite boring around the climax. Jenkins, despite having written over 100 books, commits a common first-time-author mistake: explaining the back story at the very beginning of the book. He methodically tells the history of each character one by one, plodding through stereotypes of trailer park residents and teenagers alike. But this actually turns out to be the most entertaining part of the book, if only for inadvertently hilarious lines like, "Loving Jesus is for little old ladies!"

Each character, one by one, is begged by a Christian family member or friend - whose conversion has swept away all their faults and made them kind and gentle - to accept Jesus. And each character, one by one, comes up with his or her own deep, philosophical argument against Christianity, namely, "Jesus is for losers! You're stupid!" Or, my personal favorite, "Oh yuck! All that boring religious stuff!"

When the Rapture actually happens, the book stops being funny and starts being frustrating and boring. What should be the most exciting part is told in the past-tense. Nearly everyone discovers what happened the morning after, or from TV news.

Even when the author actually gives himself a chance to describe to the reader what the Rapture looks like, he fails. The "newsman" (also known as an anchorman, to those who bother to do their research) _describes the very clip he is showing_! Isn't that the author's job? Later on, when the kids are shown a video made by a minister explaining the Rapture, Jenkins doesn't even bother to tell you what the video says - only that it clears everything up and convinces the characters that Christianity is the truth. Well, as long as it does nothing more than _change the character's lives_, there's no reason to tell us what it _said_ or anything...

Read this book if you like to laugh at shoddy theology and even shoddier writing. Or read it because you genuinely believe the Rapture will happen, taking the word of two 19th century literalists over 1,900 years of Christian theology. If you are of the latter group, I have a message for you: as the bumper sticker says, come the Rapture, can I have your car?

I also noticed that it never mentioned that only a third of the world is Christian, and that only a fraction of those are especially committed to their faith, so the Rapture would technically only apply to about a quarter-billion people.

So. What did I learn? Some Christians aren't afraid to manipulate children to bring them around to their way of thinking. Sometimes the world is very depressing.

This would be okay if it weren't based on just the fundamentalist Christian viewpoint that if you aren't Christian you are doomed. (Because if those guys are right, Ghandi went to Hell.) They could have said that only the pure of heart made it or something like that. But no, it's set up so if you're a Zen Bhuddist, you are evil.

It rather pissed me off.