Leave the World Behind
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3.4 • 242 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION
A Recommended Book From
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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 week. But a late-night knock on the door breaks the spell. Ruth and G. H. are an older couple—it’s their house, and they’ve arrived in a panic. They bring the news that a sudden blackout has swept the city. But in this rural area—with the TV and internet now down, and no cell phone service—it’s hard to know what to believe.
Should Amanda and Clay trust this couple—and vice versa? What happened back in New York? Is the vacation home, isolated from civilization, a truly safe place for their families? And are they safe from one other?
Suspenseful and provocative, Rumaan Alam’s third novel is keenly attuned to the complexities of parenthood, race, and class. Leave the World Behind explores how our closest bonds are reshaped—and unexpected new ones are forged—in moments of crisis.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
This terrifying thriller is impossible to stop listening to, especially on a chilly night. Clay and Amanda take their family to a luxe vacation home in the Hamptons expecting rest and relaxation. But when another couple arrives and claims the vacation home is actually theirs, things turn decidedly ominous and it becomes clear that something terrible is happening. Rumaan Alam’s first foray into dystopian psychological horror is fantastic. He matches his tense plot with a disorienting writing style in which the unnamed omniscient narrator constantly breaks the fourth wall to address us directly with snarky asides about the characters’ inner thoughts, whether it’s Clay’s disgust about his kids’ fast-food-induced flatulence or Amanda’s casual racism. Narrator Marin Ireland does a great job helping us to inhabit the story while building an overall sense of disorientation as the potentially apocalyptic circumstances mount into a sense of spine-chilling dread.
Customer Reviews
Nice narration, unsatisfying content
Wonderful writing and well-narrated, but ultimately the reader is lead through lot of build up and suspense with little satisfaction in the finish. I was waiting for and exciting resolve/ending or brilliant tie-up that never came.
Waste of time
I’m actually irks me that I gave this book enough time to finish it. Horribly written dribble about nothing, extremely dislikable characters (all of them), overly sexualized scenes that are meaningless to the plot; add to that the author’s disdain for middle and upper class America coming through clearly throughout the story, woke perceptions frequently slid into the dialogue that add nothing to the plot. And while it has nothing to do with the author or the story, the narrator of the audiobook reads like a spoiled teenage brat with a bad attitude.
Finally, I kept waiting for something…anything…to happen and it never did, the book ending in a mute fizzle like a dud firecracker. I almost put it down in the first 20 minutes but thought it would get better. I waited, and waited, and waited. What a disappointment.
Fantastic book that doesn’t spoon feed you.
I loved this book. A creeping dread and lots of ambiguity. I loved not having the full picture and yet feeling this growing awareness of the seriousness of the events u folding just away from the main characters.