rumaan alam leave the world behind review

The walls are white, the picket fence is white, and inside the house is a white middle-class family of holidaymakers “pantomiming ownership”. In a field surrounded by woods stands a lone brick house – “the very material the smartest piggy chose because it would keep him safest” – a luxurious Long Island vacation rental that is out of reach of mobile phone service, and out of earshot of the neighbours. Alam’s trope-heavy third novel has the makings of a farce, and the portents of a slaughter. When a midnight knock breaks the quiet of Rumaan Alam’s Leave the World Behind, any one of these plot creatures might be waiting on the doorstep. It’s the narrative spark of children’s jokes, fairytales and campfire ghost stories, of drawing-room dramas and horror film bloodbaths.

Thankfully though, it found its way out of the backlist for me, and I’d highly recommend you pick it up.A n unexpected knock at the door. I’m sad that this one slipped through the net for me - Leave the World Behind originally was published in 2020 and I don’t think I heard too terribly much about it (understandable, I suppose). Leave the World Behind also had a smidge of that hypersexuality of Sally Rooney or Lisa Taddeo, which I’m personally not a fan of, but it didn’t detract from the story for me so I’ll let it slide. The anticipation of what was to come kept me going, and admittedly I think this lead-up might have been essential to understanding the dynamics of the family before things change too much.

If I hadn’t read the back cover and known what the book was about, I probably would have dozed a little. If there is any criticism to be had it is that the setup felt a little long.

I would love to have a conversation about this with someone else, actually. Things left off perfectly for me - I’m not really sure that there could have been an end that would have satisfied me, so I sort of appreciate that Alam didn’t force one. I love that kind of thing, but if you don’t like still having questions by the end of a story, maybe skip this one. I will warn you that the end does not wrap up neatly. I think an end-of-the-world story is perfect for a literary telling, but too often it can slip into more of a sci-fi or dystopian tone, so this isolation worked well in my opinion. Even when Clay attempts to leave the house at one point, he finds himself lost and driving in circles. There is this quiet magnetism that keeps the story of our two families separated from the rest of the world, saving from the minutiae of what exactly goes on when the world ends save Alam’s occasional omnipotent reference to moments outside the focus of the story.

Rumaan alam leave the world behind review