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A white, upper-middle class New York family rents a house on Long Island for a vacation weekend. While they're there, the owners of the house return. They're a wealthy Black couple who explain that they had to come back because something's wrong in New York City--power and internet is out, and no one knows exactly what's going on. The two families end up living in the house together as they slowly begin to realize that what happened will change the world and their lives forever.
Leave the World Behind is an extremely, extremely literary mainstream version of a post-apocalypse novel. It has a strong element of social satire, and is almost entirely populated by characters who are basically the New Yorker's supposedly humorous"Shouts and Murmors" column come to life:
Amanda did the New York Times crossword on her phone—she was afraid of dementia, and felt this was preventative—and the time passed strangely, as it did when measured in minutes before the television.
All the characters are incredibly self-conscious 100% of the time:
Clay returned with a surprising number of paper bags.
“I went a little overboard.” He looked sheepish. “I thought it might rain. I don’t want to have to leave the house tomorrow.”
Amanda frowned because she felt she was supposed to. It wouldn’t ruin them to spend a little more than was usual on groceries. Or maybe it was the wine. “Fine, fine. Put those away and let’s eat?” She wasn’t sure she wasn’t slurring a little bit.
Race issues, and white people's hypocrisy thereof, are a major part of the novel:
Jocelyn, of Korean parentage, had been born in South Carolina, and Amanda continued to feel that the woman's mealy-mouthed accent was incongruous. This was so racist she could never admit it to anyone.
I have all these excerpts to give you a sense of the very distinctive writing style, which is a big reason why the book has won a ton of awards. I found it simultaneously deeply obnoxious, extremely accomplished at doing what the author wants it to do, and bizarrely compelling. I read the entire book in an evening, when I had expected to DNF somewhere around chapter one.
A number of reviews by ordinary readers, as opposed to critics, were very frustrated by the lack of explanation of what the apocalypse was. I was the opposite: I would have liked certain aspects to be explained less. The novel is written in omniscient, God-level POV, so we occasionally get explanations of what's going on or glimpses of what happens elsewhere. This is well-done in itself, but for me the book was strongest when the apocalypse consists of incredibly eerie things happening with no one having any idea of what they are.
At one point a terrible sound occurs, causing glasses to crack and people to collapse. This sound isn't a bang or a sonic boom or anything anyone can describe, and is so alien from anything anyone has ever heard before that it jars them all out of their denial that something both terrible and worldshaking has happened.
We eventually get an explanation of the sound, and it's both anti-climactic and raises a lot of "But wait a second..." type of questions. It's a sound made by secret American military aircraft flying overhead. This explanation makes the sound reminiscent of a sonic boom, which is way less terrifying, and also makes it make no sense that no one has ever heard it before: if it's a function of how the aircraft operate, then people must have heard it before. You can't just launch an aircraft that's never been flown.
The last chapter of the book is excellent, and for me a very satisfying conclusion. It's open-ended and mysterious, but in a fitting way, and it does end the book on a note that makes it feel like a story has been completed. I have to note that many readers did not like the ending at all and thought the book just stopped.
This isn't really my kind of book, but I liked it a lot more than I expected, even while every sentence made me think "ugh I HATE these people" and "ugh this sentence makes my skin crawl." It captures an aspect of contemporary life that I HATE in a very stylized and artificial manner that I HATE, and yet it's very well-done. I wouldn't ever read anything else by Alam, but I don't think the people who gave this book its awards were wrong.
I'm going to keep on skipping "Shouts and Murmurs" though.
Leave the World Behind is an extremely, extremely literary mainstream version of a post-apocalypse novel. It has a strong element of social satire, and is almost entirely populated by characters who are basically the New Yorker's supposedly humorous"Shouts and Murmors" column come to life:
Amanda did the New York Times crossword on her phone—she was afraid of dementia, and felt this was preventative—and the time passed strangely, as it did when measured in minutes before the television.
All the characters are incredibly self-conscious 100% of the time:
Clay returned with a surprising number of paper bags.
“I went a little overboard.” He looked sheepish. “I thought it might rain. I don’t want to have to leave the house tomorrow.”
Amanda frowned because she felt she was supposed to. It wouldn’t ruin them to spend a little more than was usual on groceries. Or maybe it was the wine. “Fine, fine. Put those away and let’s eat?” She wasn’t sure she wasn’t slurring a little bit.
Race issues, and white people's hypocrisy thereof, are a major part of the novel:
Jocelyn, of Korean parentage, had been born in South Carolina, and Amanda continued to feel that the woman's mealy-mouthed accent was incongruous. This was so racist she could never admit it to anyone.
I have all these excerpts to give you a sense of the very distinctive writing style, which is a big reason why the book has won a ton of awards. I found it simultaneously deeply obnoxious, extremely accomplished at doing what the author wants it to do, and bizarrely compelling. I read the entire book in an evening, when I had expected to DNF somewhere around chapter one.
A number of reviews by ordinary readers, as opposed to critics, were very frustrated by the lack of explanation of what the apocalypse was. I was the opposite: I would have liked certain aspects to be explained less. The novel is written in omniscient, God-level POV, so we occasionally get explanations of what's going on or glimpses of what happens elsewhere. This is well-done in itself, but for me the book was strongest when the apocalypse consists of incredibly eerie things happening with no one having any idea of what they are.
At one point a terrible sound occurs, causing glasses to crack and people to collapse. This sound isn't a bang or a sonic boom or anything anyone can describe, and is so alien from anything anyone has ever heard before that it jars them all out of their denial that something both terrible and worldshaking has happened.
We eventually get an explanation of the sound, and it's both anti-climactic and raises a lot of "But wait a second..." type of questions. It's a sound made by secret American military aircraft flying overhead. This explanation makes the sound reminiscent of a sonic boom, which is way less terrifying, and also makes it make no sense that no one has ever heard it before: if it's a function of how the aircraft operate, then people must have heard it before. You can't just launch an aircraft that's never been flown.
The last chapter of the book is excellent, and for me a very satisfying conclusion. It's open-ended and mysterious, but in a fitting way, and it does end the book on a note that makes it feel like a story has been completed. I have to note that many readers did not like the ending at all and thought the book just stopped.
This isn't really my kind of book, but I liked it a lot more than I expected, even while every sentence made me think "ugh I HATE these people" and "ugh this sentence makes my skin crawl." It captures an aspect of contemporary life that I HATE in a very stylized and artificial manner that I HATE, and yet it's very well-done. I wouldn't ever read anything else by Alam, but I don't think the people who gave this book its awards were wrong.
I'm going to keep on skipping "Shouts and Murmurs" though.
