Summary:
“A magnetic novel about two families, strangers to each other, who are forced together on a long weekend gone terribly wrong.
From the bestselling author of Rich and Pretty comes a suspenseful and provocative novel 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.
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?”
From: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/leave-the-world-behind-rumaan-alam?variant=39254096838690
Overview:
Something has happened—something significant, something world changing. Yet this something, this catalyst for Rumaan Alam’s Leave the World Behind, takes a backseat, is simply a plot device in a novel that really isn’t plot driven. This novel is not about the events that create the situation, or even the situation itself; this novel is about people. Plain and simple. It’s not about how people react to adversity and uncertainty, thought those are unavoidable components of the story. The novel is about how people work: their prejudices and preconceptions—not only with regard to others, or how the world should be, but also how they see themselves. At its core the novel is about people struggling with their inclinations—good and bad—while moving through a world that has changed, is changing, and processing their notions of self and the other. It is a story of the endless reckoning that takes place throughout lives, but it is not a journey. It is a snapshot of life in its ongoing complexity.
Thoughts:
Alam’s Leave the World Behind starts out innocuously enough. It feels, if anything, banal. A family leaves for a vacation: a chance to, as the title says, leave the world behind. The prose feels almost excessively heavy in its description at the onset. But, as the novel progresses, this depth of detail becomes the very locus of the character studies at the heart of the book. Alam’s insight into people’s inner-workings, without judgement or value assessment, provides a lens through which we cannot help but gauge ourselves.
Leave the World Behind has recently been adapted as a Netflix film starring Mahershala Ali, Julia Roberts, and Ethan Hawke. The film deviates somewhat from Alam’s story, leaning more heavily on the question of what exactly has happened, using devices better suited to film in an effort to create tensions that vary in ways from those in the book. Despite these changes, both the book and the film are worth the reader’s/viewer’s time, as the latter differs enough to stand apart from the former without being so far removed from the source material as to seem negligent.
Also by Rumaan Alam
Available at Town Hall Library