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Leave the World Behind

Rumaan Alam (Goodreads Author)

3.35 · Rating details · 38,279 ratings · 6,659 reviews

A magnetic novel about two families, strangers to each other, who are forced together on a long weekend gone terribly wrong

Amanda and Clay head out to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a vacation: a quiet reprieve from life in New York City, quality time with their teenage son and daughter, and a taste of the good life in the luxurious home they’ve rented for the we ...more

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Hardcover, 241 pages

Published October 6th 2020 by Ecco

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· 38,279 ratings · 6,659 reviews

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Jun 28, 2020 Roxane rated it it was amazing

A white family is vacationing in the Hamptons when the black owners of the home they are renting show up. Together the families must figure out what’s going on, because something terrible is clearly happening. This is an exceptional examination of race and class and family and what the world looks like when it’s ending—not at all different from the world we are in now. Finely o served details throughout.

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Oct 29, 2020 Cindy rated it liked it

This book is the most low-key and vague thriller I’ve read and would therefore be best enjoyed by readers who like very scaled back horror that focuses less on action and more on subtle feelings of dread and uneasiness. The whole point of the book is that you don’t know what’s going on, and it’s the absence of knowledge that is meant to play into the tension and fear. The story personally didn’t strike me the same way, perhaps due to the meandering nature of the conversations between the charact ...more

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Sep 22, 2020 Roman Clodia rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: dnf

A potentially interesting scenario here, though one rather overplayed and everywhere due to Covid, but the writing had me grating my teeth right from the start: 'they huddled and inspected like Caravaggio's Thomas and friends', 'his penis jerked itself towards the sun, a yoga salutation, bouncing, then stiff at the house's allure' - the prose is constantly over-written with a 'why use one word when you could use fifty?' attitude.

The narrative stance is like a third-person stream of consciousnes ...more

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Jun 06, 2020 Nilufer Ozmekik rated it really liked it

Get ready to watch this book’s adaptation on Netflix. Such an amazing team on the board: Homecoming and Mr. Robot’s director Sam Ismael and fabulous cast including Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts!!! I cannot wait !!!

Oh noooo!!!! This is smart, thrilling, riveting suspense and family drama but it’s not a great choice to read it during your quarantine and chill times because it’s claustrophobic, dark, suffocating, apocalyptic story.

Something going on outside and you gotta stay in your house Get ready to watch this book’s adaptation on Netflix. Such an amazing team on the board: Homecoming and Mr. Robot’s director Sam Ismael and fabulous cast including Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts!!! I cannot wait !!!

Oh noooo!!!! This is smart, thrilling, riveting suspense and family drama but it’s not a great choice to read it during your quarantine and chill times because it’s claustrophobic, dark, suffocating, apocalyptic story.

Something going on outside and you gotta stay in your house to save yourself but maybe sometimes taking risk and leave the world behind, getting out of your shelter to see the things with your own eyes would be the best alternative!

The story terribly reminded me Jordan Peele’s “Us’: Family with two kids renting a vacation home and but another family appears at the door. Thankfully they are not their evil twins to come for replacing them like Us’ plot-line. This story is mostly psychology suspense, it is not a horror story!
It starts Amanda and Clay- a lovely couple wants to escape from their city life and rents a vacation home at Hamptons for reasonable price as weekend getaway with their two kids. Everything starts quite relaxing, entertaining, peaceful like the silence before the storm or happiness before the approaching disaster as like all those thriller movies’ beginning.

Suddenly they hear the banging on the door and meet with G.H. and Ruth, house’s real owners escaped from NY because of blackout and came to their second home to use their shelter. The internet, television, cell service are shut down as a proof of their story. So they let them in. Of course the thought balloons start to appear above your head: are these people really the real owner of the house? What the hell is happening outside? Is this the apocalypse? How long to families need to stay together and do they trust each other? Should they do that?

High tension, family drama, class-race differences mixed with uncertainty of their situation and growing claustrophobia and feeling trapped in one location.

I could really give this book 5 stars because of great plot-line. But the perplexing language style, complex vocabulary choices and the way of story-telling were a little exhausting and complex for me. It broke my concentration at few times. Ending was okay but it could be more surprising and shocking. Those facts lowered my points to 3.5 but I still rounded them up to 4 because the promising premise and high tension story-building were delightful. It was still exciting, heart throbbing page-turner.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Harper Collins Publishers/Ecco for sharing this ARC with me in exchange my honest review.

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Oct 12, 2020 Frank Phillips rated it it was ok

This was a book I was very much looking forward to, considering all the positive hype it has received, and it's relevant subject matter, I could not wait to pick this one up. Unfortunately, this will go down as one of the biggest disappointments of 2020 for me in the book world... It just did not hit the mark . There was so much potential, and despite the explicit vulgarity and often annoying style, I thought it was still redeemable and could not wait to see how this came together at the end... ...more

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Sep 22, 2020 JanB rated it it was amazing

Shelves: netgalley, 2020-reads, fiction

4.5 stars

A middle-aged white couple and their two teenage children have their vacation at a luxurious, secluded Airbnb interrupted by a late night knock at the door. The black owners of the home are at the door with a story of a major unknown event that knocked out the power along the east coast.

Over the course of the next few days, tensions surface between the two families and fear is the overriding emotion. There is no cellphone, radio, or tv reception, leaving them totally cut off from the w 4.5 stars

A middle-aged white couple and their two teenage children have their vacation at a luxurious, secluded Airbnb interrupted by a late night knock at the door. The black owners of the home are at the door with a story of a major unknown event that knocked out the power along the east coast.

Over the course of the next few days, tensions surface between the two families and fear is the overriding emotion. There is no cellphone, radio, or tv reception, leaving them totally cut off from the world with no idea what is happening beyond their four walls.

It is clear a cataclysmic event took place, and the third person omniscient point of view allows the reader brief glimpses into what is happening in the outside world. The lack of details and the unknown adds to the overriding sense of menace. (The same type of technique that made Bird Box so terrifying.)

The author give the reader a look into the thought processes of all involved, which reveals hidden biases. The underlying themes of age, class, race, and the blindness of modern life bubbles beneath the surface. I give credit to the author for respecting the intelligence of his readers by handling them all with a light touch, which makes more of an impact. The beginning chapters meanders along and what looks at first glance to be mundane filler, such as the vacationer’s grocery list, is very revealing, as is later made clear.

Atmospheric, character-driven, and thought-provoking, this is a literary mix of genres that totally worked. The writing is sharp and smart. My two complaints are worth overlooking: the occasional use of obscure words, and TMI with some personal details.

I read this book in two sittings, and when I wasn’t reading it, I was thinking about it. In fact, I finished it last week and I’m still thinking about it. The ending is not tied up in a neat bow, which will bother some readers, but I thought it was perfect and fitting. This won’t be for everyone, but it was certainly for me.

A Netflix movie, starring Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington, is in the works. I can totally see this story playing out on the screen.

*I received a digital copy of this book via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
*Publication date 10/6/2020 by Ecco Press, HarperCollins ...more

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Jul 17, 2020 Michelle rated it it was amazing

Shelves: netgalley-arcs, favorites

Prepare to be freaked the fuck out!!!

Amanda and Clay along with their two teenage children head out to a luxurious vacation home in the Hamptons. They spend the day lounging poolside, eating, drinking, and enjoying each others company which is easy to do when the wi-fi is so spotty where they are. After enjoying a nice dinner and after the kids have turned into bed Amanda and Clay just want to relax after a glorious summer day of sunshine but then there is a knock on the door. This late in the Prepare to be freaked the fuck out!!!

Amanda and Clay along with their two teenage children head out to a luxurious vacation home in the Hamptons. They spend the day lounging poolside, eating, drinking, and enjoying each others company which is easy to do when the wi-fi is so spotty where they are. After enjoying a nice dinner and after the kids have turned into bed Amanda and Clay just want to relax after a glorious summer day of sunshine but then there is a knock on the door. This late in the evening? Who even knows they are there?

"There it was, undeniable: noise. A cough, a voice, a step, a hesitation, that uncatergorizable animal knowledge that there's another of the species nearby and the pause, pregnant, to see if they mean harm. There was a knock at the door. A knock at the door of this house, where no one knew they were, not even the global positioning system, this house near the ocean but also lost in farmland, this house of red brick painted white, the very material the smartest little piggy chose because it would keep them safest. There was a knock at the door."

At the door are the homeowners, G.H. and Ruth, an older black couple. They have come from their home in the city due to a black out. They felt it would be safer here. Amanda and Clay are hesitant. These are strangers. They may not even be the homeowners but their need to be kind and compassionate to these older folks outweighs everything and so they let them in.

That's all I'm saying because everything after this is straight out of a pandemic nightmare.

"You told yourself you'd be attuned to a holocaust unfolding a world away, but you weren't. It was immaterial, thanks to distance. People weren't that connected to one another. Terrible things happened constantly and never prevented you from going out for ice cream or celebrating birthdays or going to movies or paying your taxes or fucking you wife or worrying about the mortgage."

Holy hell this was good, good, good. And freaky. And intelligent - I used my dictionary quite a bit with this one but that's okay because I love learning new words. I will say the ending is abrupt and it looks like some readers aren't enjoying it but honestly I don't think that this author could have ended it in any other way. It's sometimes the not knowing that makes something truly scary. There are so many themes to discuss that this would make an excellent choice for book clubs. 5 *terrifying* stars!

Thank you to NetGalley and Ecco for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review. ...more

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Oct 21, 2020 Alexander Christian rated it did not like it

Leave this Book Behind

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Oct 12, 2020 Elyse Walters rated it really liked it

Shelves: mystery-thriller, fiction

Audiobook.... read by Marin Ireland

“Love goes on after a bomb”....
And....
“All anyone really wanted was home and food”.....
....Sausage pasta, wine, Chardonnay, whiskey, carrots and hummus, eggs, cereal, chips, cokes, desserts, cakes, ice cream, donuts, cookies, salty goldfish crackers, hamburgers, hotdogs, orange slices, cheese & crackers, strawberries, zucchini, blueberries, yogurt, bread,, tuna, beans, cans of soup,
Sliced turkey, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, cakes, more vodka, more whiskey, more b ...more

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Sep 09, 2020 Elle rated it really liked it

Recommended to Elle by: Jordy’s Book Club

Shelves: 2020, from-publisher

I don’t know how to talk about this book. It’s just so out of left field. I don’t even know if I liked it.

But I’ll try to vaguely review it here, as just about everything that I want to say could be considered a spoiler. The biggest feeling I had while reading was one of tension. There’s something constantly bubbling underneath the surface and you’re never quite sure what it is. And that tension keeps building towards a climax, but it doesn’t ever seem to reach it. I’m left with more questions ...more

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Sep 24, 2020 Chelsea Humphrey marked it as dnf-lost-interest

Shelves: from-publisher, netgalley

Going to have to mark this as a DNF for now, but I'm hoping that it will work well for me at a later date, as I've heard the conversations around race and privilege are thought provoking and timely. At the moment, I just can't slog through the over-written prose, but I'm hoping that the right reader will snatch this up at publication, as I believe in supporting this author and what Alam is trying to tell with this story. Basically, it's me and not the book. :(

*Many thanks to the publisher for pr ...more

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Oct 20, 2020 Michael David rated it liked it

Well, this is definitely an original story. I’ll give it that.

Amanda and Clay, and their two children, head to a remote area of Long Island to vacation at a beautiful Airbnb. After a day of of fun and sun, a knock at the front door takes them out of their reverie. On the other side of the door is George and his wife, Ruth. They are the owners of the home. After a sudden blackout in New York, they decided to travel to the remotely located home to figure out what is going on.

There is, in fact, a ...more

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Oct 04, 2020 Debra rated it really liked it

Shelves: netgalley

Do you still have your bearings?

Two families forced to spend a weekend together....

The book begins as Amanda, Clay and their two children are staying at a luxurious Airbnb home on long island, expecting a quiet weekend away from the hustle and bustle of NYC. One night there is a knock on the door and there are the owners of the home, Ruth, and G.H., who have come to their rental home to escape the blackout in NYC. Soon the internet, electricity, and cable go out. Will no cell service, should Cla ...more

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Nov 04, 2020 Hannah rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: arc, 2020-publications

Sometimes I am so in the minority with a book that I am starting to question whether I read the same book as everybody else. This is one of those cases (partly at least, because an abundance of DNF-reviews agrees with me). I did not get on with this. Maybe I should have called it quits when at 15% in, Alam had managed to reference the genitals of three of the four family members. Snark aside, I was very much the wrong reader for this – where other people read scenes as tense, I found them satiri Sometimes I am so in the minority with a book that I am starting to question whether I read the same book as everybody else. This is one of those cases (partly at least, because an abundance of DNF-reviews agrees with me). I did not get on with this. Maybe I should have called it quits when at 15% in, Alam had managed to reference the genitals of three of the four family members. Snark aside, I was very much the wrong reader for this – where other people read scenes as tense, I found them satirical – and I do not particularly like satire. I found the tone impossible to pin down and as such the reading experience was more frustrating than anything else. Additionally, there were mainly three things that did not work for me: uneven perspective, disdainful characterisation, and a lack of trust in the reader’s intelligence.

Alam chose a omniscient narrator for his story, flitting between his characters’ heads, often within the same paragraph. While this might have worked had the tone been different, here I found this led to a lack of tension and an immense amount of frustration on my end because he chose to keep things artificially hidden from the reader. I would have prefered the narration to be either closer to the two couples or further away, as it was, the sprinkled-in sentences about the outside world took the little bit of tension I felt completely away.

I do not mind unlikable characters (at all, especially when they are women) but I need to feel like the author cares for their characters. Here I felt like I could basically see Alam sneering at his characters and I found that approach unkind – and again leading to my lack of interest in what was going on. He is also weirdly focussed on genitalia in a way that I found frankly baffling – I do not know what purpose the masturbation and sex scenes played for the story and I would have rather not spent this much time reading about a teenager’s penis.

It felt like Alam did not trust his readers to understand subtext or character development. Everything is spelt out, excrutiatingly. So much that I started to wonder if something really obvious was flying over my head. By the time I finished this book, all goodwill I had towards this book based on the incredible premise was lost.

Content warnings: (view spoiler)

I received an ARC of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The quotations are taken from an unfinished copy and are subject to change.

You can find this review and other thoughts on books on my blog. ...more

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Oct 15, 2020 Gabby rated it liked it

Shelves: adult, botm, cover-lust, has-a-movie, 3-star-books, thrillers-or-mystery, audiobooks-i-listened-to, literary-fiction, own, read-in-2020

I'm so torn over how I feel about this book. This definitely felt more literary fiction than thriller to me, which I wasn't expecting after reading the description of this book, I guess I was expecting something with a little more action in the story. But this book is definitely more of a slow burn, but there are some true moments of tension between these characters in this book that I really enjoyed. I listened to the audiobook for this one while reading along simultaneously, and I'm kind of gl ...more

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Oct 04, 2020 Michelle rated it it was amazing

Shelves: direct-from-publisher, oct-2020-reads, netgalley-approved

4.5 rounded up to 5

There's a lot of mystery around what this book is exactly about. Everyone is being deliberately vague and after having read it myself, I can now say that is the right approach. I finished this over the weekend and ever since then, I’ve been trying to think of how many other books made me feel this way. Not many, that’s for sure. This is a book you have to deliberately read (and go blind into) and allow yourself to absorb carefully. I think one of the most genius things about i 4.5 rounded up to 5

There's a lot of mystery around what this book is exactly about. Everyone is being deliberately vague and after having read it myself, I can now say that is the right approach. I finished this over the weekend and ever since then, I’ve been trying to think of how many other books made me feel this way. Not many, that’s for sure. This is a book you have to deliberately read (and go blind into) and allow yourself to absorb carefully. I think one of the most genius things about it, is that everyone will have their own reaction and response to it. The reason being is that fear is unique. We aren’t all afraid of the same things for the same reasons. Alam takes that knowledge and puts that on display perfectly. He moves the walls of the room closer and closer and closer until you can only hear the sounds of your own heart beating faster and faster and faster. This book is brilliant and while I know it won’t be a favorite for everyone, it’s a book that asks you a very personal question. What do you become when you’re ability to obtain knowledge disappears???

If I read this book in any other year, I would have given it a lower rating. When Rumaan Alam wrote this, he had no idea all the things that would happen in 2020. Particularly, COVID. This book is much more impactful now that we've been living with this virus for 8 months. It's no longer something that sounds awful or allows you the hubris to think, "Man, I'm sure glad I never have to worry about that happening." This is now. This is real life. The disbelief, the feeling of being caught off guard, the need for knowledge, the longing for normalcy - those are all things we are experiencing. Right now! So before 2020, I wouldn't have understood, I wouldn't have "gotten it". But I get it now. I get what this does to people. I get what this does to society. I get what this has done to me.

Thank you so much to Ecco Books and Rumaan Alam for my free review copy and to Netgalley for digital copy in exchange for an honest review.

Review Date: 10/06/2020
Publication Date: 10/06/2020 ...more

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Oct 10, 2020 Debbie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: netgalley, thriller, 2020-best-reads, favorite-thrillers, edelweiss, family-drama

4.5, rounded up

Not a plain old thriller!

This book tricked me! Here I was reading a book about an apocalypse! This is NOT my genre! I went into it blind, like I love to do, and I thought I was getting a plain old thriller. But I don’t want to scare off people—this is more like apocalypse light. There’s no gore, no dead bodies, no zombies. And there is distance (covering my mouth so I don’t say more). I think of it as a family drama with weird things happening.

First, a quick and vague plot synopsi ...more

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Oct 11, 2020 Larry H rated it liked it

There always seem to be books that get a tremendous amount of hype and critical buzz (and sometimes win major awards), yet when I read them I'm left scratching my head at what I might have missed. How could something appeal to so many and bypass me entirely?

Rumaan Alam's new novel, Leave the World Behind , is the latest to add to that list. It's a National Book Award nominee and it has been praised by numerous publications and critics. I have seen mixed reviews among friends of mine on Bookst ...more

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Oct 15, 2020 Karen rated it really liked it

This is a story about the end of the 🌎
A white middle class family from Brooklyn goes to vacation on Long Island at a remote Airbnb.
Their stay is interrupted at midnight by an older Black couple knocking on the door claiming to be the owners of the house and asking to stay the night because there is a blackout in all of New York City, and they don’t want to stay in their apartment in the city.
So... they are all sheltering in place, getting to know each other while an unknown terror is happening ...more

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Dec 02, 2020 Kaceey rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: buddy-read, libro-fm, audio

3.5*
Hmmm.... what can I say?💁🏻‍♀️
This was a difficult book to review. While it was a seemingly long journey warming up to the storyline, in the end I was left with a feeling of oppressive dread.

I try approaching my reads as blindly as possible, but occasionally that tactic works against me.

Amanda and Clay pack their two teenage kids into the family car to take a much needed vacation away from the city. Renting a home in the countryside, nothing could provide a more serene and idyllic setting ...more

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Jun 11, 2020 Jessica Woodbury rated it really liked it

Shelves: horror, speculative, arc-provided-by-publisher, authors-of-color, best-2020-arcs

I thought I knew what a Rumaan Alam novel meant, but wow was I wrong. It is still so much of what I expected: the granular, sharp detail and the observations on a particular strain of comfortable, liberal white people. AND YET. I will not be the only one to have this experience, and in a way it's a sly bit of marketing to just talk about this like it's going to be a "strained relationships under pressure" novel of manners with some extra suspense kind of thing. For a reader like me, it is an abs I thought I knew what a Rumaan Alam novel meant, but wow was I wrong. It is still so much of what I expected: the granular, sharp detail and the observations on a particular strain of comfortable, liberal white people. AND YET. I will not be the only one to have this experience, and in a way it's a sly bit of marketing to just talk about this like it's going to be a "strained relationships under pressure" novel of manners with some extra suspense kind of thing. For a reader like me, it is an absolute delight to be slowly, oh so slowly, moved from a place of comfort to a place of physical horror. But a lot of readers are going to be really really mad at this book for tricking them so I would just like to start off by saying that if you do not like being deeply unsettled, maybe move along. Or at least know going in that this is not going to be a book that takes care of you.

I feel like making grand pronouncements about this book. It is the first real Pandemic Lit. There has been much speculation about what novels about this era will look like, and who knew the first one would be written before any of it started. It is a Trump Era Novel. It is both of these things, because what it is really doing is taking that feeling of dread you (hopefully) experienced on November 8, 2016, everything that suddenly felt so precarious, all the horrors that now seemed possible, all the structures that in a moment looked ready to topple, and channels all of it into this compact story in a vacation house in Long Island.

It is a horror novel because it is about fear. The fear of strangers, the fear of the unexplainable, the fear of harm coming to your children. This is the book in a nutshell. Well, it is the book eventually.

At first, we are setting the stage and that is when you have that Ah yes, a Rumaan Alam novel feeling. From the moment you meet Amanda and Clay you already know everything about them. They live in Brooklyn, she works in advertising and he is more of a professorial/writer/intellectual type, they have more money than most but not enough to feel like they are truly comfortable. When rich people ask them where they are from, Amanda lies and says a nicer neighborhood than they actually live in. They are a relatively happy family. They have rented a house on Long Island to take a break from the city and have a family vacation. In one scene, Alam follows Amanda to the grocery store and catalogs each purchase and I was riveted. Even though it was a menial thing, it was also immediately revealing, every purchase a signal she is sending to herself and her family about who they are and what they are going to do with this vacation.

Then things start to get weird. After a few days of lounging, letting you get comfortable with these people and this setting, there is a knock at the door. And you think you know where you're at. It is an older Black couple, and oh now we will get into the good stuff, yes? Yes. But also. This is just the tiniest tip of the iceberg.

Alam is so smart here, keeping the focus on this family, the "intruders," and the house itself. But every so often just slipping in a tiny bit of what is happening outside of this small setting. Just enough so that we realize our characters are in deeper than they know, to raise the stakes and have us even more troubled than they are. It builds this sense of urgency. Horrible things are happening, they must be happening, even if we are not sure exactly what they are, but here are Amanda and Clay staying up late, speculating, heating up leftovers and drinking vodka. Remember how we all said that the thing so many apocalypse novels got wrong about it is how boring it is? This book gets it. It gets the intricacies of the day, how they continue on, how we downplay and rationalize and insist that everything is fine. How when we do feel threatened we don't know how to respond, how when the crisis is no longer something you can ignore you can lose all sense of propriety.

The closest comparison I have for this book is 2019's THE NEED, which also bridges the Horror and Literary divide, and also involves parental fear and a deep feeling that something is Wrong. The style is quite different and so is the story, but the way both books mess with your head and your sense of security is quite similar. Alam's granular detail only intensifies the pacing as the book moves along. Once I was 70% of the way through my e-book I knew there was no going back, I was sitting there until I was done.

If you enjoy this kind of dark and deeply unsettling surprise, this will be a real win for you, like it was for me. But this isn't a book I'll recommend lightly. It definitely belongs in the subgenre I call "WTAF?!" and not everyone is comfortable there. I also recognize that some readers are going to have to give this one a pass until the world feels a little less precarious. (If that ever happens.) ...more

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Nov 26, 2020 Susanne Strong rated it really liked it

Shelves: libro-fm-alc, audiobooks

Dark, atmospheric, eerie and harrowing.

A relaxing vacation on Long Island turns out to be anything but for Amanda, Clay and their children Archie and Rose.

What at first seemed like the perfect vacation at an Airbnb is disturbed by a knock at the door late one night. It’s the homeowners: G.H. and Ruth Washington and they have news. A Blackout has hit the entire East Coast. At first Amanda and Clay are in disbelief, even when Satellite TV plays the Emergency Broadcast system on all channels and ...more

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Oct 11, 2020 Andi rated it did not like it · review of another edition

What the fuck did I pay money to read.

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Sep 12, 2020 Ben rated it did not like it

Shelves: could-not-finish

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher of the book. Although the book is only 236 pages, it is still bloated. This should have been a 50-60 short story at most. The author constantly overwrites scenes that needn't be. It took 6 pages just for the couple to be invited into the house. The author goes on for one entire page listing food items that a character purchased. Is this really necessary? He describes scenes that have no bearing on the story whatsoever. These scenes could be totally deleted a ...more

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Oct 02, 2020 Sheena rated it it was ok

Shelves: fiction, netgalley, mystery-thrillers

“Step into our beautiful house and leave the world behind”.

A family vacation in Long Island is interrupted when the homeowners return with news of something weird going on. Is the world ending? Is there a war? A natural disaster? WHO KNOWS.
The synopsis interested me and I thought there would be some Jordan Peele vibes but wow, I was so wrong. In the second chapter we get two pages of what Amanda buys from the grocery store. That’s when I knew this book was not what I thought it would be. The ov ...more

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Oct 14, 2020 Julie Ehlers rated it liked it

Shelves: book-of-the-month-club

My friends are all over the map when it comes to Leave the World Behind; I've seen every rating from 1 to 5 stars. Nothing makes me more curious than wildly varying reviews, which is why I'm more disappointed than usual to find that I come down right in the middle on this one.

On the one hand, the introvert in me loves nothing more than a small setting: Gather everyone together in an isolated house, and I'm a happy reader. Make it a fancy vacation home, and I'm even happier. (I laughed when I sa My friends are all over the map when it comes to Leave the World Behind; I've seen every rating from 1 to 5 stars. Nothing makes me more curious than wildly varying reviews, which is why I'm more disappointed than usual to find that I come down right in the middle on this one.

On the one hand, the introvert in me loves nothing more than a small setting: Gather everyone together in an isolated house, and I'm a happy reader. Make it a fancy vacation home, and I'm even happier. (I laughed when I saw a couple friends' reviews complaining about getting a list of every food item a character buys at the grocery store—I love that kind of stuff. Let's buy our groceries and settle in!) Then when the plot kicked in, I got happier still. Y'all know how much I love plot, and this one was particularly intriguing and menacing.

So all of that held me for about 120 pages, at which point I started noticing a few things: That all the characters were paper-thin. That Alam's similes, of which there were many, were frequently ridiculous (my favorite/least favorite: a gasp is described as "the noise deaf-mutes make in moments of passion." What). And that the plot, which started with such a bang, had slowed to a crawl. Ultimately, for me it didn't quite work to (view spoiler)

What it boils down to is that by the last 50 pages I was desperate for the book to be over. But was I desperate because the book didn't work, or because the book worked too well in the spell it cast? Who wouldn't want to get the hell out of this situation? And isn't that exactly the effect Alam was going for? I suspect I'm going to need some time and distance to determine whether this book was excruciating in a good way or bad way. I'm going to plunk my 3 stars down and get to work on creating some distance. ...more

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Sep 11, 2020 Denise rated it liked it

I finished this one some time ago but hadn't found the words to really describe it. It's eery, bizarre, over-the-top crazy, and filled with numerous descriptions of awful body fluid functions; but I still kept turning every page waiting to see what how it would all be explained.

When Amanda and Clay and their teenage son and daughter head out to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a quiet reprieve from life in the city and a taste of the good life in the luxurious Airbnb they’ve rented for I finished this one some time ago but hadn't found the words to really describe it. It's eery, bizarre, over-the-top crazy, and filled with numerous descriptions of awful body fluid functions; but I still kept turning every page waiting to see what how it would all be explained.

When Amanda and Clay and their teenage son and daughter head out to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a quiet reprieve from life in the city and a taste of the good life in the luxurious Airbnb they’ve rented for the week, the last thing they expect is a late-night knock on the door from the owners of the house, who are in a panic. They bring news that a sudden blackout has swept the city, but in this rural area - with TV and internet down, and no cell phone service - it’s hard to know what to believe, and from whom they are really in danger.

It sounds so intriguing and fitting due to the crapshow we are currently living in called 2020, and it was for part of the book - until it all went downhill. Once the hundreds of deer start showing up in the backyard, and a flock of flamingos fill the pool and then magically fly away, it started losing me. The dystopian aspect is one that I don't generally gravitate toward in my books. The unexplained noise, loud enough to crack glass, that came and went without any warning, did bring me back around a bit, as it was believable and would have made for interesting explanation of what may have happened to the world at large, but alas, I was disappointed there as well. I seriously read the final pages of the book thinking my ARC must be missing pages! The ending is so incomplete and leaves the reader with so many questions that it actually irritated me. My guess is that is Alam is going for the "you imagine" kind of ending, and after thinking about it, I have no idea how I would have ended the book or explained the crazy occurrences; but nonetheless, it left me dissatisfied and with "meh" feelings about the entire book.

The book has some great elements addressing age, class, and race, and Alam does a fantastic job of getting into his characters' heads, as their fear and angst leapt off the page at times; but that being said, for me personally, the writing style didn’t quite work. It had an almost unpleasant harshness to it - not because it was bleak and horrifying - it was just the way Alam went about it, almost as if he was mocking the reader. It just wasn't my cup of tea. Like it or not though, the quality of Alam's writing is undeniable. This book has much to say, and it does so in a manner that strikes subtle terror in an idyllic setting that turns into an apocalyptic nightmare.

Overall, I think this book is perfect for a specific audience, but unfortunately, it is not me. 3 stars.
...more

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Dec 19, 2020 Zoeytron rated it really liked it

Shelves: public-library

At a remote location on Rhode Island, a family happily vacations in a luxurious AirBnB. Something happens, a terrible noise is heard, followed by a profound quietness. The cell phones stop working, then the TV, radio, and internet. They are effectively off the grid. It may be that they are in a safe haven, but it is not a given. The cast of light outside is "off", the air is thick and muddled. Insects and birds have fallen silent, even as the deer emerge from the thick woods that surround ...more

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Oct 13, 2020 Andreas rated it did not like it

Shelves: bad-ones, fiction, thriller

An interesting and provocative plot wasted over nonsensical, absurd writing. I could probably write a proper review, but I could also just copy-paste Merriam Webster’s definition of “pretentious” and call it a day (fret not though, for I shall provide you with evidence further down):

1: characterized by pretension: such as
a: making usually unjustified or excessive claims (as of value or standing)

b: expressive of affected, unwarranted, or exaggerated importance, worth, or stature

So, the aforemen An interesting and provocative plot wasted over nonsensical, absurd writing. I could probably write a proper review, but I could also just copy-paste Merriam Webster’s definition of “pretentious” and call it a day (fret not though, for I shall provide you with evidence further down):

1: characterized by pretension: such as
a: making usually unjustified or excessive claims (as of value or standing)

b: expressive of affected, unwarranted, or exaggerated importance, worth, or stature

So, the aforementioned evidence. First, you have your nonsensical pretentiousness:

“The car was Clay’s domain, and he was lax enough that it accrued the talus of oats from granola bars bought in bulk […]”

“Three flamingos lifted out off the pool’s surface with a masculine flaunting of wings.”

“The air was that sweet cocktail of ocean breeze and happenstance, good for tomatoes and corn, but you thought you could also catch a note of luxury cars, fine art, those soft textiles rich people leave piled on their sofas.”

“It was a noise, but it was transformation. It was a noise, but it was a confirmation. Something had happened, something was happening, it was ongoing, the noise was confirmation even as the noise was mystery.”

Then you have your weird sexual metaphors:

“The shadow of a young girl in flower; the bloodhound might find the metal beneath the whiff of entry-level cosmetics, the pubescent predilection for fake apples and cherries.”

“He could pick up her disapproval like sonar. It was like the swell that presaged an erection. They’d been married sixteen years.”

“Archie, long limbs and acute angles, barely convex chest sprouting brown twists at the pink nipples; Rose, curvy and jiggling, downy with baby hair, her polka-dot one-piece straining just so at the legs, pudendum in relief.” (By the way, this is a mother’s description of her teenage children)

“She flipped onto her stomach, the sheets warm from her body, so the transitive warmth against her vulva was that of her own body, and flopping around in the bed was an act of masturbation.”

“In the living room, Archie stuffed his feet into his Vans and used his tongue to contemplate the tender empty pockets in his gums. They were soft and pleasant, like the recesses of the human body his own was designed to fit into […]”

All of this to say: don't waste your time. ...more

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Oct 06, 2020 jenny✨ rated it it was ok

Shelves: coverlust, author-of-colour, poc-reppin, queer-authors, suspense, its-me-not-you, 2020, adult-contemporary, literary-fiction

The brain abets the eye; eventually your expectations of a thing supersede the thing itself.

Unfortunately, my high expectations for this book didn’t end up superseding my subpar experience with it. :(

But if there’s anything you should know before I get into things, it’s this: Rumaan Alam writes white people better than white people write white people.

◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️

Thematically and ambience-wise, there’s something about Leave the World Behind that reminded me of ...more

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About Rumaan Alam

Rumaan Alam

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I'm the author of the novels Rich and Pretty, That Kind of Mother, and Leave the World Behind.

My short fiction has appeared in StoryQuarterly, Crazyhorse, Meridian, and elsewhere. I've also written for the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, and the New Republic, where I am a contributing editor. I co-host two podcasts for Slate, where I am also one of the parenting advice col ...more

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“People weren’t that connected to one another. Terrible things happened constantly and never prevented you from going out for ice cream or celebrating birthdays or going to the movies or paying your taxes or fucking your wife or worrying about the mortgage.” — 5 likes

“Parenthood was never knowing what was going to hurt your kids, but knowing only that something, inevitably, would.” — 3 likes

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