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S'està carregant… Leave the World Behind (2020)de Rumaan Alam
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Books Read in 2021 (296) Top Five Books of 2020 (483) » 16 més Top Five Books of 2021 (174) Books Read in 2020 (517) Best Beach Reads (51) Best Family Stories (236) Reading 2021 (5) Obama Reads (21) No hi ha cap discussió a Converses sobre aquesta obra. IDK why I never agree with Roxane Gay's ratings considering I love her books but what the fuck did I just read? It was like he was trying to be an omniscient narrator but he also didn't know what was going on and none of the characters had any personalities and literally nothing happened the entire time and the ending was just confusing and I just.... what did I just read???? ( ![]() I can't remember now where I saw it but the author was telling someone something along these lines: "Don't pay attention to the first chapter. I tried to show the editor that I can WRITE. After the first chapter it's normal." During the first chapter I had a feeling that I wasn't reading it in English and I almost DNFed it, but then quickly he ran out of all the fancy words such as "synecdoche" and switched to ordinary yet a tad posh English. I actually really enjoyed the writing and the disturbing atmosphere he created. There were so many quotable quotes I yearned to highlight. I'm parallelly reading Beartown in Swedish and Backman is also very quotable and they kind of talk about similar things - family, children, fear, humanity. I often caught myself thinking of a particular quote and which book it was from. There is something of Backman in Alam. An apocalypse book from a fresh perspective I debated about reading this because I'm not enjoying dystopian novels right now. This deals with the possibility of a total disaster having occurred already. Clay and Amanda and their teenage children Rose and Archie, are on Long Island, having rented an Airbnb to spend a week of solitude. They have an inkling that something has gone awry in the world at large when Amanda's phone receives a text that there has been a blackout in NYC. Nothing can be verified, even after the owners of the house appear on the doorstep and want to spend the next few hours (days?) with them at the house. The fact that the owners are a rich black older couple causes Amanda, at least, to express fears as to their credibility and purpose, based on their race. However, the fact that additional unexplained events continue to happen, the couples overcome their misgivings and muddle along together. The suspense builds slowly through numerous seemingly unconnected events. Causes are hinted at, but never fully explained. I was very frustrated with having future misfortunes predicted for various characters at the same time that plans were being made for the future. Then it ended. What did I just listen to? My thoughts coming soon!
Leave the World Behind was written before the coronavirus crisis and yet it taps brilliantly into the feeling of generalised panic that has attached itself to the virus and seems to mingle fears about the climate, inequality, racism and our over-reliance on technology. As the reader moves through the book, a new voice interjects, an omniscient narrator who begins to allow us gradual access to the terrifying events taking place across America. In cutting detail, Alam moves between all the characters’ private thoughts on race, privilege, class and survival, revealing the lies they tell each other both to encourage a sense of calm and to protect their own insecurities.... There’s a dark comfort to engaging with these stories, a sense that living in uncertainty does not necessarily mean we are alone—and that knowing the future won’t help prevent it. I felt a particular isolation in the immediate aftermath of the storm; I feel it every day in the coronavirus era. Resolution will come later. Knowing that is enough for now. “Understanding came after the fact,” Alam writes of his characters. “You had to walk backward and try to make sense. That’s what people did, that’s how people learned.” Alam doesn’t dwell in the specificity of apocalypse, which has been the obsession of writers since the Flood. Instead he lobs a prescient accusation: Faced with the end of the world, you wouldn’t do a damn thing... “Leave the World Behind” teeters on that seesaw-edge question in horror fiction: to reveal the monster or not? Ultimately it totters too far to one side, but there is still the primal nail-biting need to know what-the-hell-is-going-on. This propulsion, which drives much of the characters’ decisions, likewise drives the reader onward to a breathless conclusion that, if not altogether satisfying, is undeniably haunting. Where other practitioners of the genre revel in chaos—the coarse spectacle of society unravelling—Alam keeps close to his characters, who, like insects in acrylic, remain trapped in a state of suspended unease. This, he suggests, is the modern disaster—the precarity of American life, which leaves us unsure, always, if things can get worse.... In the book’s final pages, as the tension suddenly ratchets up, Amanda thinks to herself, “They were equipped to handle certain fears. This was something else. It was hard to remind yourself to be rational in a world where that seemed not to matter as much, but maybe it never had.” “Leave the World Behind” is the perfect title for a book that opens with the promise of utopia and travels as far from that dream as our worst fears might take us. It is the rarest of books: a genuine thriller, a brilliant distillation of our anxious age, and a work of high literary merit that deserves a place among the classics of dystopian literature.
A Recommended Book From Vogue * Vulture * Newsweek * NY Observer * The New York Post * Parade * The Millions * PopSugar * AARP * Publishers Weekly * Kirkus * Alma 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. No s'han trobat descripcions de biblioteca. |
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![]() GèneresClassificació Decimal de Dewey (DDC)813.6 — Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLCC (Clas. Bibl. Congrés EUA)ValoracióMitjana:![]()
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