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Leave the World Behind (2020)

de Rumaan Alam

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Membres	Ressenyes	Popularitat	Valoració mitjana	Mencions
1,580	103	9,883	(3.49)	107
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.… (més)

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A Children's Bible de Lydia Millet (sturlington)
sturlington: Well-off people on vacation when disaster hits.

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▾Ressenyes dels membres

Anglès (100) Francès (2) Totes les llengües (102)

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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???? (

)

ninagl | Jan 7, 2023 |

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. (

)

dacejav | Jan 4, 2023 |

An apocalypse book from a fresh perspective (

)

bspar | Jan 1, 2023 |

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. (

)

terran | Dec 29, 2022 |

What did I just listen to?
My thoughts coming soon! (

)

RubieReads | Oct 25, 2022 |

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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.

afegit per Lemeritus | editaThe Guardian, Alex Preston (Nov 9, 2020)

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.”

afegit per Lemeritus | editaTIME, Annabel Gutterman (Oct 6, 2020)

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.

afegit per Lemeritus | editaThe New York Times, Afia Atakora (Web de pagament) (Oct 6, 2020)

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.”

afegit per Lemeritus | editaNew Yorker, Hillary Kelly (Oct 5, 2020)

“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.

afegit per Lemeritus | editaWashington Post, Porter Shreve (Web de pagament) (Oct 5, 2020)

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▾Altres autors

» Afegeix-hi altres autors (1 possibles)

Nom de l'autor	Càrrec	Tipus d'autor	Obra?	Estat
Rumaan Alam	—	autor primari	totes les edicions	calculat
Wood, Sara	Dissenyador de la coberta	autor secundari	algunes edicions	confirmat

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Títol normalitzat

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Leave the World Behind

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Data original de publicació

2020

Gent/Personatges

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Amanda

Clay

Ruth Washington

George "G. H." Herman Washington

Archie

(mostra tots els 8 ítems)

Llocs importants

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Long Island, New York, USA

New York, New York, USA

Brooklyn, New York, USA

Esdeveniments importants

Pel·lícules relacionades

Premis i honors

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National Book Award finalist (2020.1 | Fiction, 2020)

The Morning News Tournament of Books (Quarterfinalist, 2021)

Read with Jenna (2020.09 | September 2020)

Book of the Month Club Selection (2020.10 | October 2020)

Orwell Prize shortlist (Political Fiction, 2021)

Epígraf

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Love goes on like birdsong,
As soon as possible after a bomb.

--Bill Callahan, "Angela"

Dedicatòria

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for Simon and for Xavier

Primeres paraules

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Well, the sun was shining.

Citacions

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There was no real structure to prevent chaos, there was only a collective faith in order.

Sometimes distance showed a thing most clearly.

Amanda wasn’t magnanimous. The call was a relief. She wanted her colleagues to need her as God wants people to keep praying.

He sat on the front lawn in the shade of a tree and smoked. He should feel bad about this, but tobacco was the foundation of the nation. Smoking tethered you to history itself! It was a patriotic act, or once had been, anyway, like owning slaves or killing the Cherokee.

Clay was diligent but also (he knew it) a little lazy. He wanted to be asked to write for the New York Times Book Review but didn’t want to actually write anything.

(mostra tots els 34 ítems)

“What did it say?” Ruth wanted more information. She’d seen it with her own eyes but knew nothing. “Did it say why?”

Ruth had learned only one thing from the current reality, and it was that everything held together by tacit agreement that it would. All it took to unravel something was one party deciding to do just that. There was no real structure to prevent chaos, there was only a collective faith in order.

G.H.’s business was money’s preservation. Actual spending was so abstract to him that he did as the contractor said. Danny was one of those men other men didn’t want to seem a fool in front of. He had a power over men that was almost sexual, in the way that sex always ends up being about power. You’d do what he said, and maybe in your worst moments you’d worry that Danny was laughing at you. Their checks had certainly paid for Danny’s daughter’s year at private school. That’s why they rented: to recoup.

You never know when a time is the last time, because if you did you could never go on with life.

Years ago, Ruth was asked to help out in the school office. Dalton wanted to increase diversity. Now Ruth was immune to kids’ germs and mostly impervious to their charms.

Nothing matters to children but themselves, or perhaps that is the human condition.

Whatever they thought they’d understood was not wrong but irrelevant.

Their bodies knew what their minds did not. Children and the very old have this in common. Born, you understand something about the world. That’s why toddlers report conversing with ghosts and unnerve their parents. The very old begin to remember it, but can rarely articulate it, and no one listens to the very old anyway.

Trees marked their lives in rings that can’t be seen; people, in the garbage they left everywhere, a way of insisting on their own importance.

“Let’s eat something. I’m going to take a shower, and then we should eat something. I think that will help.” No, that wasn’t quite it. “I can’t think of anything else to do.”

Parenthood was never knowing what was going to hurt your kids, but knowing only that something, inevitably, would.

You told yourself you’d be attuned to a holocaust unfolding a world away, but you weren’t. It was immaterial, thanks to distance. People weren’t that connected to one another. Terrible things happened constantly and never prevented you from going out for ice cream or celebrating birthdays or going to the movies or paying your taxes or fucking your wife or worrying about the mortgage.

Home was just where you were, in the end. It was just the place where you found yourself.

Clay could feel his wife tense up. She preferred that they eat healthily (especially Rose). He could pick up her disapproval like sonar. It was like the swell that presaged an erection. They'd been married sixteen years.

Clay found a baseball game on the radio, though he did not care about baseball. He thought the description comforting, the play-by-play like being read a bedtime story.

She said "Fine" the way adolescents learn to pronounce it, with all the fervor of any four-letter word.

Rose turned the secret of the deer over and over, as you would a hard candy on your tongue.

The sickness in the ground and in the air and in the water was all a clever design. There was a menace in the woods and Rose could feel it, and another child would have called it God. Did it matter if a storm had metastasized into something for which no noun yet existed? Did it matter if the electrical grid broke apart like something built of Lego? Did it matter if Lego would never biodegrade, would outlast Notre Dame, the pyramids at Giza, the pigment daubed on the walls at Lascaux?

They couldn't know that the silence that seemed so relaxing in the country seemed so menacing in the city, which was hot, still, and quiet in a way that made no sense.

G.H. would have pointed out that the information had always been there waiting for them, in the gradual death of Lebanon's cedars, in the disappearance of the river dolphin, in the renaissance of cold-war hatred, in the discovery of fission, in the capsizing vessels crowded with Africans. No one could plead ignorance that was not willful.

Maybe they should feel only awe at life's mysteries, as children did.

They both were and were not alone. Fate was collective but the rest of it was always individual, a thing impossible to escape. They lay that way for a long time. They didn't talk because there was nothing to discuss. The sounds of their sleeping children were relentless as the ocean.

Archie shivered the way you might when you walk into a spiderweb, the way you might if you saw a spider dart from beneath your pillow and lose itself in your mosaic-printed bedsheets, the way you might if a spider crept from your shoulder up your neck and nestled into the comforting cave of your ear, the way you might if a spider dropped from the ceiling and landed on your hair and then picked its way forward carefully down the slope of your nose so you could barely see it with your wide-set eyes, the way you might if a spider started and bit you and then became a part of you, inextricable as your DNA, the thing that made you.

Ruth didn't believe in prayer, so she thought of nothing.

The youngest child was used to not being noticed.

Rose knew what the noise was, but no one had asked her. It was the sound of fact. It was the change they'd pretended not to know was coming. It was the end of one kind of life, but it was also the beginning of another kind of life.

Was this a test of faith? It affirmed only their faith in their ignorance.

It took unimaginable courage to kill your children.

None of those forty mourned those dead even one bit. They were bad men, they told themselves, not knowing how little it mattered whether you'd spent your life being good or bad.

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Nota de desambiguació

Editor de l'editorial

Creadors de notes promocionals a la coberta

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Novey, Idra

Abbott, Megan

Machado, Carmen Maria

Hunt, Samantha

Kiesling, Lydia

(mostra tots els 7 ítems)

Llengua original

CDD/SMD canònics

813.6

LCC canònic

PS3601.L3257

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▾Descripcions del llibre

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.

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