Leave the World Behind--whole book discussion with spoilers

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Welcome to our discussion of Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam. This thread is for open discussion, spoilers ok.

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Hi everyone. We have some people still just beginning the book so let's keep our comments for the next three days limited to impressions through ch. 14, page 85.

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This part of the book covers the sequence of events up to the point where Ruth and G.H. have shown up at the house they air bnb'd to Amanda and Clay and their children. The two families are settling in with one another uncomfortably.

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I'm really curious about how people related to the storytelling style, in particular for this section.

The author is unapologetically moving into the private thoughts of all of the characters, and changing the point of view very rapidly within a scene.

How did you feel about it?

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The other thing I'd say about the writing style is that there is an extreme particularity to it.

Here's a bit from p 20:

Her body still contained the secondhand warmth of the sun. The pool water had barely been a respite, the tepidity of bathwater. Amada's limbs felt thick and superb. She wanted to lie down and roll away into sleep. Her fingers strayed to the parts of herself where they felt best, in search not of some internal pleasure but something more cerebral: the confirmation that she, her shoulders, her nipples, her elbows, all of it, existed. What a marvel, to have a body, a thing that contained you. Vacation was for being returned to your body.

I think that's interesting to analyze from a POV perspective--who exactly is thinking these words?

[Mark]

I've enjoyed the effortless hop between characters. I've also enjoyed the detailed construction of the quotidian base of the story. Alam then extends the hops to George and Ruth, showing how they are navigating a very different world, where their tenants might be planning to "stand their ground."

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In the "general" thread Alwynne commented that the early chapters feel a bit "Brett Easton Ellis meets Jay McInerney." I identified with this comment because a lot of the early writing especially feels body-oriented in ways that made me uncomfortable, especially the first time I read it.

Here on page 2 is a section where I felt distinctly uncomfortable with the closeness to the body and its realities.

Archie was 15. He wore misshapen sneakers the size of bread loaves. There was a scent of milk about him, as there was to young babies, and beneath that, sweat and hormone. To mitigate all this Archie sprayed a chemical into the thatch under his arms, a smell unlike any in nature, a focus group's consensus of the masculine ideal.

Not only was I feeling metaphorically way too close to the character of Archie when I read this passage--I was also, this early in the book, feeling confused and disoriented by the voice.

Who is making these observations, anyway? The Author/Narrator, I guess, but there is also a thread of someone closer, maybe a parent, who is thinking of his/her child as this odd smelly mix of baby and grown man.

[Alwynne]

I assume the narrator too but it seems to overlap with Amanda's voice, there's a direct link to her observations at the end of the chapter when she's looking at the children through the window.

[Alwynne]

I liked the detailing of Amanda's local purchases, I know other reviewers found these annoying but they're so telling: buying recycled coffee filters but then following up with paper towels and avocadoes.

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Alwynne wrote: "I assume the narrator too but it seems to overlap with Amanda's voice, there's a direct link to her observations at the end of the chapter when she's looking at the children through the window."

Exactly--the narrative voice is really floaty, and it took getting used to, for me. The re-reads have given me time to track where the point(s) of view are coming from, and to think about how meanings shift, as the points of view shift.

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Alwynne wrote: "I liked the detailing of Amanda's local purchases, I know other reviewers found these annoying but they're so telling..."

I don't like lists at all in novels. I think they're typically signs of a writer thinking incorrectly that they are very clever.

But I mentioned this list in my review of the novel, because it totally overcame my dislike of lists. I think its specificity and its contradictions make it a masterful, perfectly condensed summary of who Amanda is.

[Alwynne]

I see that, in the other thread, you mentioned the emphasis on smells etc and I thought that seemed to be developing a theme, Clay at the beginning of Chapter 4 outside thinking about being "just another animal", it's a reminder of their embodied state which I thought was meant to suggest their inherent vulnerability. Like the deer they could become subject to unexpected hazards that are out of step with their understanding of the world around them.

[Alwynne]

lark wrote: "Alwynne wrote: "I liked the detailing of Amanda's local purchases, I know other reviewers found these annoying but they're so telling..."

I don't like lists at all in novels. I think they're typic..."

Exactly and it plays on the lists in more commercial novels, particularly the ones that are meant to make you envious or want to emulate a character - details of their clothing, brands etc. Here it seems to be in that vein but it's actually undermining the character's self-presentation.

[Alwynne]

Okay I've finished this now and my questions are really more about reader responses than the novel itself. It seemed to me a fairly innocuous piece, so I'm puzzled about why it's divided readers so much, I couldn't find anything here to love but I couldn't find anything to hate either. But the book does seem to have touched a nerve for some, and be extremely zeitgeisty for others. I wondered if part of my inability to understand that relates to my position as a reader who's not American so didn't pick up on certain cultural cues/perspectives?

[Mark]

Ran across a phrase that really struck me: "Morality was vanity, in the end." Clay's thought at the end of chapter 10. It'll be interesting to see if that's developed more.

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Ok I think we’re ready to open up the whole book for discussion. Stop reading the thread here if you’re worried about spoilers.

[Sam]

In answer to earlier questions.
1. I loved the narrative style
2. I liove the narrative POV where the reader can feel an narratorial/authorial presence shaping and/or commenting on the narration, something not too metafictional as to dominate the text but just where yoy can sense a presence. Think Jonathan Swift or
Henry Fielding from the past, as compared to the too metafictional Sterne. An example of a more recent author that used this technique to great advantage was Muriel Spark. This style IMO lends great humor to the novel which I saw everywhere in the novel. Another characteristic of the author's style is how he playing with television and cinematic influences. One example already mentioned is the lists which very much reflects and reminds one of branding in films. A second is the constant undercutting of generic storyline progressions that are a significant element in film plotting.

[Alwynne]

The cinematic aspects seemed to be, perhaps I'm being too cynical here, a conscious attempt to produce something ripe for translation into film/TV. Also was the ending intended to be ironic? All that initial emphasis on race, social stratification, and the saviour figure is the young, middle-class, white girl!

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I didn't get the feeling that Rose is a savior. I get the feeling that she is a survivor, which is different. It's possible that Alam means this to be intentionally ironic since he isn't white.

But I didn't feel irony. I thought the omniscient 'aside,' that Rose would survive what was to come, was hopeful, but also humbling. Her victory is a small and uncertain one. The way she survives is going to be by turning her back on every former value of human society, and by accepting a smaller place in the world.

I like the way the natural world begins to overcome and invade the sterile artificial human world. The animals are filled with sudden confidence in some (to me) of the most beautifully rendered scenes in the novel. It's as if they know their time has come.

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Alwynne wrote: "All that initial emphasis on race, social stratification.."

I needed to take a leap of faith that Alam knew what he was doing here--why would he begin the novel as a drama of family dysfunction (one that reminded me a lot of the writing and characters in The Corrections) and then evolve it into a novel of race and class, where a Black couple and a white family literally need to learn to live together...and then abandon this novel 'type' unfinished and without conclusion as everything begins to fall apart and people begin to die?

If I think of it as deliberate--which is easy for me, because the style of the writing is so deliberate--then I begin to feel how the disintegration of the expected plot lines is deliberate too. So at first we're in a novel where we're expected to go along with the idea that consumer culture and material success are important values. Then that falls away and we're in a novel where race and class matter. Then this falls away, too, just as any of these higher-order needs and concerns would fall away in a catastrophe.

It's as if I as a reader was taken along this journey, where I needed to learn, like the characters need to learn, that what I thought of as important in the beginning turned out to be trivial. I was fooled twice. Deliberately.

[Alwynne]

I really don't want to detract from or question your response to this, individual readers bring different things to bear on the same material but I found that journey fairly obvious and quite superficial. I didn't think that the work was uncontrolled just not particularly intellectually challenging or sophisticated. It didn't go anywhere unpredictable and it didn't say anything I hadn't heard before in numerous iterations. I thought it was riddled with homilies, and pseudo-philosophical aphorisms. It's interesting though that you compare this to work by Franzen, another writer whose work I find ultimately quite dull. And I suppose I didn't find the prospect of Rose's survival optimistic because I didn't find her credible as a character, she seemed more a rhetorical device, in the way that children are often invoked in relation to the future, political strategies etc. So the fact that she might survive had no impact, she was too much a function of the text.

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Alwynne wrote: "It's interesting though that you compare this to work by Franzen, another writer whose work I find ultimately quite dull...."

Yes, the body-specificity of the early chapters especially reminded me of the character Chip in The Corrections, who had some gross preoccupations. I needed to let go of my personal distaste and my sense of TMI about the writing to keep reading. Same here. I almost thought of the early chapters of the novel as a spoof of The Corrections style of writing, though, because of where the novel goes next.

I guess we've read different things. I found this novel to be a new experience, most of all for the way it unfolds. The way it categorically refuses to fulfill my expectations.

But as I mentioned a few times it took me a re-read to feel that way about it, vs. feeling a bit snookered by it.

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Sam wrote: "In answer to earlier questions.
1. I loved the narrative style

Me, too, but it wasn't love at first read. I almost felt irritated, but I think it's less to do with the switching points of view than it has to do with the lens I'm looking through--Alam magnifies the faults of his faulty humans, where I see all the flaws and pores.

Sort of like a Ron Mueck depiction of human beings. There is very little mercy in the writing.

I will take this opportunity to link to my favorite Ron Mueck sculpture, Big Man ~ owned by the Hirschhorn in Washington DC:

https://hirshhorn.si.edu/explore/ron-...

[Alwynne]

I didn't mind the 'body-specificity' it made sense in terms of the narrative, it was a constant nagging reminder that they were, after all, like the other animals around them, a species under threat. I also didn't find it particularly gross not compared to books like 'Portnoy's Complaint' which is positively dripping in bodily fluids. But maybe that's because I'd just finished Jawbone which is far more graphic in its portrayal of bodies, excretions and physical vulnerability.

And I'm genuinely intrigued by how vastly different people's reactions to this novel have been, and even though I have strong opinions about it, I don't want to suggest they're necessarily right or the only reading possible.

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Sam wrote: "An example of a more recent author that used this technique to great advantage was Muriel Spark. ,..."

This is really interesting. Thanks, Sam. I've read a few novels of Muriel Spark's including the glorious The Driver's Seat and you're right, there is a sardonic God-Author present in the novel, commenting from on high in ways that allow me to appreciate what's going on.

I like it.

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And I'm genuinely intrigued by how vastly different people's reactions to this novel have been, and even though I have strong opinions about it, I don't want to suggest they're necessarily right or the only reading possible..."

Am I right that your strong feeling is one of indifference?

I felt completely indifferent to a book I read recently, to the point where it was like I'd been asleep for the two hours I read it. But other people loved it and got a great deal out of reading it. It's mysterious. (The book was (view spoiler)[The Woman in the Purple Skirt by Natsuko Imamura (hide spoiler)])

[Sam]

Alwynne wrote: "The cinematic aspects seemed to be, perhaps I'm being too cynical here, a conscious attempt to produce something ripe for translation into film/TV. Also was the ending intended to be ironic? All th..."

I saw more the novel adapting cinematic aspects in ways that work better in a novel than cinema. For example from the very beginning we are given a family going on vacation. Adult male and female, with son and daughter. From film and television we have expectations on what types of things are going to happen from this ensemble. National Lampoons Vacation did very well some years ago subverting expectations in what would happen through comedic exaggeration etc. Alam is playing with our expectations in a different way. His description of the couple is very suggestive of the Yuppies get punished plot line that was popular a few years ago, reflected in their descriptions, behavior, thoughts, and conversation.
The two possible expected storylinesare in conflict. And overall, we are anticipating a thriller which adds another conflict to expectation. But just noticing the language on the first page, one can see how Alam's writing is exercising elements more suitable to a literary work and these are also clashing with expectations. We should take a few minutes just to analyize the first couple of pages.

[Alwynne]

Indifference is a good way of summing it up, it's very readable but not, for me anyway, memorable. That's why I wondered if I was the right reader for it, it seems to me a very American novel, the issues around race, social/economic status do resonate in a British context, after all we're the two most capitalist nations in the world and we both have major problems around race and racism, but they play out in different ways because our history's diverge. So I wondered if it had some kind of political or social significance for (some obviously not all) American readers that I couldn't fathom. I noticed for example the polarisation you mentioned in the reviews on GR, and the sheer ferocity of some of the negative reviews was puzzling. It reminded me of reading reviews on here of more overtly political books or books that focus on issues like white privilege, and the intense response from readers who don't want to entertain/engage with/or are threatened by concepts like that.

[Alwynne]

Sam wrote: "Alwynne wrote: "The cinematic aspects seemed to be, perhaps I'm being too cynical here, a conscious attempt to produce something ripe for translation into film/TV. Also was the ending intended to b..."

I was thinking more of structure, dialogue, scene-setting whereas I think you're talking more about genre conventions in terms of tropes etc.

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Sam wrote: "We should take a few minutes just to analyize the first couple of pages.
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I'd love that! I'm still trying to figure out how it works. Would you like to start?

[Sam]

I'll throw out a couple words tomorrow. I am wqtching the Booker ceremony at present.

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Alwynne wrote: "So I wondered if it had some kind of political or social significance for (some obviously not all) American readers ..."

Alwynne, from what I've heard and read from the negative reviewers it's mostly been this sense of being snookered that enrages people--that they felt they were promised an apocalypse novel, preferably with some Martians bursting up out of the street right in front of Tom Cruise, or at least some Ebola-like body horror, and what they got instead was definitely nothing of the kind. All they got were some big noises. Archie's teeth fall out.

[Alwynne]

Interesting, although I can't help wondering if the same novel by a white author would have attracted the same level of negative response. I could see readers being disappointed re; the exploration of race/racism, this is played up in a lot of formal reviews I've read but actually trails off quite quickly, as you pointed out.

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Alwynne wrote: "Interesting, although I can't help wondering if the same novel by a white author would have attracted the same level of negative response...."

Here is an interview in Vulture with Alam that I found fascinating, especially in relation to the question of how race/racism has affected his professional life, his family life, and the writing of this novel:

https://www.vulture.com/article/rumaa...

[Hugh]

I finished the book yesterday, and although I see what Alam is trying to do, I sympathise rather more with the naysayers. Yes, the book is about the interactions between the families, but the delibrate avoidance of any real explanation of what has caused the catastrophe does feel a little unsatisfactory. If the intention was to mirror the state of mind of the protagonists, the omniscience of the narrator as to what has happened elsewhere is the unsatisfactory part - if he/she knew all that detail, why would they not say more about the causes. There is also no attempt to explain why the power stays on locally.

[Sam]

I am going to try to answer from my opinion which is all I have. First, despite having an omniscient narrator, there is no gurantee we can trust him. If we look at Reservoir 13 we see an unresolved mystery, but that is intended by the author. He has a different objective. Alam seems to be in a universe of his own making, somewhere between reality and something Kafkaesque. It reminds me very much of the Rod Serling's, "Twilight Zone," " a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination." I think we have to think out of the box, use our imagination to figure out what exactly Alam is trying to do. We may not get there or we may still think he failed but I think we are selling him a little short by criticizing from conventional approaches.

One thing he does that is consistent with the thriller is to prompt responses from the reader, emotional and intellectual, but IMO, it is a bit like playing with us. The writing provokes a response but is rarely resolved and if so, not in the expected way. Even the example used by you, the uninterrupted electric power to the house seems intended to puzzle the readers and keep them uncomfortably tense.

Comparing the novel to music, it is filled with dissonance. We are never getting the resolution, the return to the tonic chord, the release of tension. I like this because I think it reflects the world portrayed by dueling news media outlets, political parties, and the resulting chaos that is occuring as a result. But I may be reading into the novel more than Alam intended.

On a sidenote, this novel is very similar in approach to Jordan Tannahill's The Listeners. This may be a developing subgenre of novel and I don't read enough to be familiar with it.

[Hugh]

For me it would have been much more powerful had the narrator known no more than the protagonists about the global situation.

[Sam]

Hugh wrote: "For me it would have been much more powerful had the narrator known no more than the protagonists about the global situation."

I hear you but I think this is more reflective of present day dreads of the variety of crises potentially affecting our world.

[Alwynne]

Hugh wrote: "I finished the book yesterday, and although I see what Alam is trying to do, I sympathise rather more with the naysayers. Yes, the book is about the interactions between the families, but the delib..."

Ben K. compared the asides about what's happening elsewhere as the equivalent of the news updates the characters can no longer access which I though was a great comparison. I assume their function in the narrative, apart from adding doses of heavily underscored pathos, is to signal that the crisis is real, not a fantasy borne out of the characters' paranoia. But once that was established it sent me off on various tangents, if the military could still scramble planes, set up camps outside airports etc and power was still working then why was there no emergency bulletin system in operation? The Internet and similar going down in the event of extreme crisis is clearly a threat that would be anticipated and planned for, I could see that the response might be slow but made no sense that some kind of emergency communication system hadn't been set up. If everywhere was in chaos then could see that might not happen but the narrator makes it clear that's not the case.

[Alwynne]

Also, and this is a general bugbear, I dislike the fatalism peddled by this and similar, recent post-apocalyptic fiction, it suggests to me an underlying political conservatism.

[Bretnie]

I've appreciated lurking in the discussion so far. I read this earlier this year, and lark I'm quite impressed with your ability to re-read books you didn't initially like.

I didn't mind the "not knowing" and the focus on the characters vs the apocalypse details. Mostly I just didn't really like most of the characters and sometimes I can still enjoy that kind of book, but didn't work out that way for me here.

I was also just frustrated by the weird decisions they made. Which is funny since I'm sure I'd do dumb things in a situation like that, but it annoyed me more anything.

On the positive side, it was an interesting book that did make me think a lot!

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Bretnie, the main reason I re-read is because people here on Goodreads are telling me something I've missed. I'm not a compulsive masochist--I need encouragement.

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This conversation is reminding me of our Real Life conversation, in the way we're talking about whether we could easily except the 'reality' of the story we were reading--accept the parameters set out by the author--or not.

It's an endlessly fascinating question to me. Everything in this book is fiction, but what is it about some parts that pull some of us out of the fictional dream?

In some cases I'm feeling as if we readers, all of us to some extent, go into a novel feeling as if we have an implicit contract with the writer to fulfill a certain set of expectations--internal consistency and real-world believability being priorities for some of us and not others.

[Bretnie]

What a good thought lark. I am not usually one to dwell on how realistic characters' actions are, or fantastical things that seem implausible.

Most of the time that's part of the joy of reading fiction. I'm not sure why I went in another direction with this one. Like, why was I ok with hundreds of flamingos hanging out by the pool, but not ok with the fact that no one turned on a radio?

Maybe it's not so much the believability, it's just the book being in conflict with what you personally want to see happen in the book. Which is more a reflection on myself than the book

[Alwynne]

lark wrote: "This conversation is reminding me of our Real Life conversation, in the way we're talking about whether we could easily except the 'reality' of the story we were reading--accept the parameters set ..."

In this case isolation, lack of communications technology and infrastructure's integral to the plot, so then opens up questions about that when other aspects of the story contradict that likelihood.

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Alwynne wrote: "In this case isolation, lack of communications technology and infrastructure's integral to the plot, so then opens up questions about that when other aspects of the story contradict that likelihood..."

I can't tell you why it was okay with me that people on an easy day trip out to the 'countryside' could be so isolated from apocalyptic events. It's a premise of the book that needs to be taken on face value so I don't worry about whether it's plausible or not but i can see why other readers would be left a bit underwhelmed by that lack of explanation.

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About water and power continuing to work when there are blackouts everywhere else: does anyone else have a recent experience with reading Earth Abides?

Author George R. Stewart is painstakingly meticulous in explaining how water and power continue to work for months and months, even after a worldwide plague kills almost everyone. Stewart includes the technical details, to the benefit of those readers who would question whether it would happen that way.

Alam doesn't bother to explain. Some readers are ok with that. I can't really tell if I'm okay with it because I've read Earth Abides!

[Alwynne]

Bretnie wrote: "What a good thought lark. I am not usually one to dwell on how realistic characters' actions are, or fantastical things that seem implausible.

Most of the time that's part of the joy of reading f..."

The radio bothered me too, so many apocalyptic American movies push the radio as the emergency broadcast fallback seemed odd they didn't know that. The same way, and Ben pointed this out, it seemed implausible that G H someone working in a cutthroat, high-finance job would be naive enough to assume his contractor was a friend not an employee. Although I suppose that was trying to make a point about class, and the men of the mind wanting to be bailed out by the working-class doers.

[Alwynne]

lark wrote: "Alwynne wrote: "In this case isolation, lack of communications technology and infrastructure's integral to the plot, so then opens up questions about that when other aspects of the story contradict..."

I think maybe there was enough for you here that compensated for any gaps or captured your imagination that you didn't find your mind drifting and questioning the minutiae? Which makes sense.

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Alwynne wrote: "I think maybe there was enough for you here that compensated for any gaps or captured your imagination that you didn't find your mind drifting and questioning the minutiae? Which makes sense. .."

Maybe it's because it's so abstract. It has the reality of a stage play.