Dec 26

Dec 26 Leave the World Behind

Author: Rumaan Alam
Publisher: Ecco
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

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 black 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 another?

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.

TL;DR Review

Leave the World Behind is a masterfully paced, unsettling novel about how everyday people might react when the world starts to end.

For you if: You appreciate the craft of literary fiction.

Full Review

“They had asked themselves questions when they decided to have children — do we have the money, do we have the space, do we have what it takes — but they didn’t ask what the world would be when their children grew.”

I had the opportunity to attend the launch event for Helen Phillips’s The Need, which Rumaan Alam moderated, and I really enjoyed it. So I was eager to read Leave the World Behind no matter what — then it was nominated for the 2020 National Book Award, and it jumped to the top of my list. I wasn’t disappointed.

The story is about a young family who rent a big, fancy house in the middle of nowhere on Long Island for vacation. Everything is gloriously normal until the owners of the house, an elderly Black couple, show up in the middle of the night. A mysterious blackout had hit the entire Northeast, and they came home seeking solace. Somehow, the lights are still on at the house, though cell and TV service is gone. While they all wait for news and the strange events escalate, the two families dance around one another, seek comfort from one another, and begin to band together.

This book is atmospheric and quietly unsettling. It’s about where normal, everyday people will be and what they’ll do and how they’ll react when the world starts to end. It’s about trust and distrust, the ways we uphold and break down social norms in the face of the unknown, and so much more. It’s also an absolute masterclass in writing tension. There was one particular scene in which the Washingtons arrive home, when everyone in the room is sort of dancing around one another and nobody is communicating the information that we, the readers, have, and I wanted to shake them all so they’d just TALK ALREADY.

If you’re a fan of literary fiction, with craft and character centered instead of plot, I think you’ll like this one. The audiobook version is also very well done!