Leave the World Behind

I couldn't put this down - I raced through it in a desperate bid to find out what happened. The tension was so well built throughout, what a book! (As much as I loved the all the unknowns and dropped hints at what had happened, and what would happen, I REALLY wanted to know what was actually going on, and whether any of them survive!) Brilliant book, cannot wait for it to hit the shops.

This was one of those books I knew I was going to love.

I knew from the description it would be right up my street but as soon as I started reading it I was immediately hooked. So much so that I set aside an afternoon for it, which was good because I devoured it all in a few hours.

The whole book has a tantilising undercurrent of dread which I absolutely loved. It’s so unclear what is happening and everything feels inevitable. I absolutely love the third person narration which changes perspective constantly.

I don’t want to give too much away because this is a book which is best going into in the dark (pun intended!). I started out thinking, oh I’ll just read 50% then I’ll nip to the shops. Then it was 70%, then 80%, then suddenly I was racing to finish.

This book is dark and fun and incredibly tense and amazingly well-written. It reminded me of Cabin at the End of the World at times and also The End We Start From, but it also felt incredibly modern and realistic and relatable yet thrilling in a completely gripping way.

This is the perfect page-turner for a quiet afternoon. I couldn’t put it down!

Its taken me days to get myself together enough to try and review this book, it blew my mind. I found it terrifying, claustrophobic, suffocating, anxiety inducing and simply brilliant.

Amanda, Clay and their 2 teenage kids have rented a home in in The Hamptons for a week of rest and relaxation and to escape busy NYC life. The house is idyllic and they happily settle into their holiday when 2 strangers claiming to be the owners of the house turn up in the middle of the night asking to come in, as New York is experiencing a blackout and its not safe for them to have stayed there. That's all you really need to know before going into this, but i have added the synopsis if you want to know more.

This story does NOT go the way you are expecting it to. The writing style is unusual, almost whimsical and some of the language used is bizarre (I don't mind admitting that i had to use the kindles built in dictionary function on many occasions!), but it all helped heighten the tension. There was a section of the story that affected me so deeply I had to put it aside and take myself to my bedroom so I could lie down and do some deep breathing to stop myself going into a total panic! No book has ever brought on a physical reaction like this.

This is definitely a marmite read, you will either love it or hate it. Its about family, race, class, and a discussion on how we as humans would cope if the very worst happend. Do we stay inside and hide, or brave the unknown? The scariest book i have ever read

This is truly a genre bending book that feels other-worldly, yet entirely close to home. This book is a sharp insight of the world we live in, now more than ever, and the everyday habits that gets us through it. It panics you, for good reason. This book is really incredible and i raced through it in one sitting.

I have never encountered Rumaan Alum before- what a writer!I

'Leave the World Behind' begins serenely, a family of 4 making the trip out to Long Island to have a much welcome break. They spend a little too much on groceries, indulge more than usual on smoking and alcohol, but all in all we are given a realistic and quiet welcome to their world.

A slight sense of foreboding lurks though - I found myself waiting to something to tip their world upside down. A pool accident, a murderer taking them hostage in the house we had been repeatedly shown was off the beaten track. What came was much more mundane, but sinister, though: a knock at the door. And the news awaiting them on the other side is the start of a chain which will forever change their future.

"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."

Two couples fight to come to terms with major changes occurring: known power outages, satellites failing and disruptions that only hint at what is going on 'out there'. The power of this tale is all in the unknown. There is a running tension, a string of events which lead to 2 sets of strangers having to make decisions which could potentially change their lives. But what is the right choice when no one knows the enemy?

This is an eerie apocalyptic tale. It is uncomfortable - a little too believable. I found myself engrossed.

It raises questions of our reliance on modern comforts and media; of what humanity means and it how much we really ever know what we can expect.

I'd give this book 4.5 stars. It is a little unsatisfying, but in a totally fitting way. After all, with the subject matter of how much human knowledge can really extend and the lurking dark, we are right there with the characters when it concludes.

The writing style is quite raw in places- not for everyone, but Alum is clearly a talented wordsmith who can capture the vastness of human experience. It is absorbing and full of atmosphere. A great read.

Thank you very much to NetGalley and Bloomsbury for this advanced copy.

“Comfort and safety were just an illusion. Money meant nothing. All that meant anything was this—people, in the same place, together. This was what was left to them.”

Wow. This quote is entirely appropriate for the time in which we now live. And so are the questions you will ask yourself after reading this novel. It’s suspensive, beautiful and creepy at the same time. I really loved it and will definitely look up other books of Alam.

This was such a good read! The intrigue and brewing distrust between the protagonists. I loved the post apocalyptic back drop and the familiarity it held to real life. Intense but a slow burn. Definitely worth a read and I cannot wait for the Netflix adaptation!

An extraordinarily timely book for these troubled times, Rumaan Alum’s Leave the World Behind is a taut, off-centre look at what might be the end of civilisation as we know it. Focusing on a family Airbnb-ing in Long Island in who experience a loss of internet and any contact with the outside world. Except, that is, for the owners of the house who turn up on the doorstep, unable to return to the city. Alum shows us how reliant we are on everything working smoothly (the supply of information, food, power, water and all the infrastructure we have come to expect), while also looking at the dynamics of family and our interaction with strangers. The tension between the holiday in the perfectly equipped house, the encroachment of nature on this not-so-wild place and the glimpses Alum gives us of terrible things happening elsewhere, is almost unbearable. Highly recommended.

I started this book this evening as I put my daughter to bed (I often read as I wait for her to fall asleep), well, it is now 1.15 am and I have just finished the book, sitting in a bath that went cold whilst I was reading it. Leave The World Behind is that sort of book; you simply have to keep reading.
The book is set in Long Island a typical family from Brooklyn have taken a holiday home and they are just starting to enjoy themselves and settle in when the owners return with news that the power has gone out in New York city.
This book is an examination of race and privilege set against a backdrop of a collapsing civilisation, so kind of like switching on the news...yeah, reading this book at this moment in time is pretty uncomfortable and pretty frightening - at points I could feel my heart pumping with adrenaline!
I enjoyed the prose too. It feel quite tongue in cheek, particularly as the book opens, there is something very evocative about the language, the heat, the sexiness, the freedom, how seriously these people take themselves and their little luxuries, but then, when things kick off, that continues, which feels quite odd, tonally- but I enjoyed it- it's different.
I was a little disappointed with the ending as I didn't feel as though there was much of a takeaway other than the idea we are all doomed and that we probably deserve it. That said, it was a thrilling ride of a read that provided me with a great evenings entertainment- now for a few mugs of chamomile tea to try and calm down!

A MUST READ!!!!!
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Prepare to be freaked out, especially if you read this during 2020 when everything seems to be imploding. This book follows 2 families as they end up thrust together in a world that seems to be ending. Amanda, Clay and their children go on a vacation in an AirBnb when a knock at the door interrupts their family time. The knock is coming from the supposed owners of the house as they were unsure where to go when a power outage hits the East Coast and they are unable to get to their apartment, hesitant but without wifi and tv the couple can't check this and don't seem to have any other option? But what is causing this blackout? What is happening? Do they indeed own the house like they say?
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This book deals with race, family dynamics, and will I believe lead to bigger discussions for anybody who reads this. Thank you so much to Netgalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for the ARC!!

What can I say.....Loved it! The only reason I didn't give it five stars was because I was left wanting more, I need to read on! I wanted 300/400/500 more pages!

This book left me feeling weird but in a good way, a must read for the modern age of being addicted to technology. I loved how the story unfolds between all the characters thoughts and actions intermingled and little snippets of what is happening around the country without the books characters being any the wiser. I felt chilled. A fantastic claustrophobic apocalyptic read.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and publishers for the chance to read and review this book!

Absolutely unlike anything I have ever read or experienced and completely brilliant. It reminded both of Jordan Peele movies, menace and dread in a domestic setting, and also of Laura Lippman or Anne Tyler with their eye for human behaviour and morivations. Absolutely unforgettable genre defying fiction.

Wow. What a book. What a read.

Leave The World Behind by Rumaan Alam is an extraordinary book ostensibly about an unknown, catastrophic event but is also an examination of race, class and family.

Amanda and Clay have travelled to the Hamptons with their teenage children Archie and Rose for a vacation at a secluded and remote house. They’re renting it for a week and it appeals precisely because of it’s remoteness. There isn’t a mobile phone signal nor is there any internet. They’re completely disconnected.

They relax. Amanda visits the local supermarket and spends a couple of hundred Dollars on food and wine, the children swim in the pool and the adults fall in love with the house. It’s high spec, beautifully finished and well appointed. They eat, they drink, they sit in the hot tub. They visit the beach, the children become sunburned and exhausted from playing in the sea. They return to the house and eat pasta. They enjoy each other’s company whilst trying surreptitiously to get an internet signal.

Then, late on their second night at the house, an older black couple appear at the door. Their names are Ruth and G.H. Washington and they say they’re the owners of the house. There’s been a power cut in New York, something Very Bad is happening, and so they’ve come to the place they feel safest. Suddenly Amanda and Clay’s relaxing holiday is anything but. There are interlopers who are intruding upon their peace. But, are they actually the interlopers? After all, the house is owned by this couple standing in the living room casting an eye over the disarray left by the teenagers and their parents.

An omnipresent narrator tells us what is happening in the house and what is happening beyond, but not the full story. We have to fill in the gaps and allow our imaginations to do the work. I kept asking myself if things were as bad as they seemed. Were the Washingtons overreacting? After all, there is still power at the beautiful, remote house but the TV isn’t working and neither is the radio.

It is raw, uncompromising and uncomfortable, especially when it comes to systematic racism. Amanda and Clay are a liberal white couple who wouldn’t describe themselves as racist, and yet when faced with a black couple at the door they feel fearful. When they discover that the Washingtons own the house Amanda is surprised because, “this didn’t seem to her like the sort of a house where black people lived.”

Thrown together, these four adults must find an equilibrium amongst the jostling for power, and yet, there is something awful happening outside. The writing is pin sharp. The moments leading up to the Washingtons appearing at the door sent chills up my spine and raised the hair on the back of my neck. In fact the whole book sent chills up my spine. Small morsels of horror are dropped into the narrative so casually that I had to go back and re-read and slowly, slowly I understood.

Clearly reading this during a global pandemic added to the feeling of mounting horror and anxiety. I think there were emotions that I was already feeling which were heightened and I perhaps understood more of the terror than I would’ve done in normal circumstances. That’s not to take anything away from the writing which is intelligent and elegant. The slow beginning is misleading, designed to ease the reader in gently to the intricacies and minutiae of family before it is abruptly disrupted.

I read it in two breathless sittings, and when I wasn’t reading it, I was thinking about it. It was right up my street; lots of questions, some answers and an altered world. It’s going to be huge (Julia Roberts has optioned it and she will star in it with Denzel Washington), so get ahead of the curve.

Leave The World Behind is a quite brilliant novel about a catastrophic event raising issues on race, family and class.

The story begins with a well off white middle class family enjoying a holiday in rented luxurious accommodation. Clay and Amanda and their children enjoy the luxuries the house has to offer and the tranquility of the countryside. This holiday bliss is upset when the owners turn up at the property, GW and Ruth a wealthy black couple. They ask to stay at their property as their is a blackout in the city. The tension builds as Amanda and Clay question wether GW and Ruth really own this property? Is their really a disaster unfolding in the world. With all methods of communication disrupted the story is dark and claustrophobic.

The writing is superb and as the tension mounts I couldn’t put the book down I found the novel a real page turner.

Leave the World Behind is an unputdownable novel set during an apocalyptic time that explores race, privilege, and family. Poised to be released as a Netflix film starring Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts, the concept is very fascinating. Imagine you go on a holiday using Air BnB and get to stay at a posh place with no wi-fi and tv - a real chance to unplug! Only, the couple who owns the place shows up knocking in a panic. The world is in a major blackout. This is their home, so they want in since they didn’t know where else to go. There is no way of confirming what the owners are telling you. Why is the world falling apart? Is it true? The claustrophobic atmosphere is outstanding. Highly recommended! Be sure to check out the novel before the movie comes out on Netflix!

This is an extremely engrossing story about a family vacation gone awry. with potentially devastating consequences A very quick read that I finished in less than a day, mostly because I couldn't wait to see how it would end. A really good read with some genuine tension and very well drawn characters.

Leave the World Behind is a tense, riveting and claustrophobic exploration of privilege, race, class, fate, family, hatred and division and one of the starkest and most terrifyingly prescient stories I have read over the past few years. It's a deceptively simple tale but one that certainly succeeds at putting you on edge and getting both under your skin and into your psyche. It soon reveals its multilayered nature where, like a set of Russian Matryoshka dolls, each layer removed reveals another below. Refreshingly original and written in wonderfully descriptive, lyrical prose, this is a modern, creepily disquieting tour de force which is deserving of the hype and immense critical acclaim it has received and a novel very much reflective of our time.

A snapshot of inevitability, the writing style is unusual and captivating, I was entranced.
This touches on the darker side of human nature, the truths that we try to hide behind civilised behaviour.
One of the most chilling observations is a character who yearns for human interaction, forgetting how much he dislikes most human behaviour.
Exploring racial bias, parental duty, privilege, class and success, among other things; this book will definitely make you think. How would you behave in similar circumstances? And when push comes to shove, are you really a good person?

Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam.

Wow! This was a book that I started mid evening and didn’t stop till I finished it in the early hours of the morning.
What starts as a family holiday in a luxury but remote accommodation in Long Island turns into the most anxiety-ridden ‘What the hell is happening here?’ scenario.

The family only manage a couple of days of fun when late at night, the owners of the property turn up with a garbled explanation that ‘something bad’ is happening out there. The only news alert that is received is that there’s a black out on the East Coast. They still have power but no access to phones, the internet or the television.

A lot is made of just how reliant we are on our phones and the internet - without it, no one knows what is happening. Is it something with a ready explanation or something more sinister?

I don’t want to give anything away but I urge that you MUST read this book!
Un-put-downable is a bit of a book review cliche, but this book was so curious, well-paced, frightening and well written that there was no chance that I could put it down without finishing it. As it was, my head was buzzing afterwards for ages with what I had read - so maybe it would’ve been better to start it earlier in the day. I certainly couldn’t sleep for ages after finishing it.
* Thanks to Bloomsbury and Netgalley for the ARC.

Believe all the hype about this book - it’s absolute perfection.
Clay and Amanda and their children Archie and Rose are escaping the city for a week of relaxation in the middle of nowhere. So when a black couple claiming to be the owners of their rental come knocking on the door late at night asking to stay, they are wary - are G.H. and Ruth who they say they are? And are they telling the truth about strange events outside of the house? As the two families settle in together, they soon realise they have far more to worry about than their fears about each other...
Atmospheric and chilling doesn’t even begin to do this book justice - Alam is a genius. The way in which he manages to avoid telling the reader exactly what is happening outside the home, but leaves little breadcrumbs for you, allows you to imagine the absolute worst, and is far more frightening than if it was spelt out. The fear he manages to evoke with the use of a sound, or an unusual number of deer (explaining the cover!) is quite incredible because it feels all too possible and apocalyptic.
Aside from the mystery and fear created in this story though, there are poignant observations of race, class, parenting and sexuality which make for a compelling dynamic of characters - Alam gets straight to the essence of unconscious bias in a way which leaves you feeling very uncomfortable.
This book is shocking, terrifying and impossible to put down - one of the best I’ve read this year.

I liked this book a lot, it was nearly a five star read for me. What made me drop a star is I felt the ending was abrupt and I wanted more resolution. This review is hard to write because I went into the story completely blind and I feel this is the best way to experience it. This book was a great blend of both character and plot driven.

This was such a great, atmospheric read. I spent a grey, dull rainy day doing nothing but reading this book and it was perfect!

A family have rented a house for a week’s holiday but the owners turn up on the doorstep unannounced, looking to shelter there as a black out hits the east coast of America.

And then the questions begin... what’s going on out there? Who has the right to be in the house? Are the people who they say they are? Will they survive?

The build up of tension is so good. Rumaan Alum sets up the characters so efficiently that I found myself connected to them very quickly even though they’re not necessarily all likeable characters! The world is no different to the world we live in today which made it feel so eerie.

It’s a claustrophobic, apocalyptic story that explores the themes of race, class and privilege through beautiful, eloquent prose.

I loved the way it ended. No spoilers 😉

Thanks to netgalley and Bloomsbury publishing for my eARC.

Great read. Total page turner, one to cost up with on a dark winters night. Definitely one that will be a movie in no time.

Without anything really happening this book has managed to scare me, worry me, excite me and challenge me!
What an amazing idea that seems so close and yet I think we are all so similar to the characters that it is haunting to think how unprepared we would be for such a disaster.
Would you, could you step up? What do you really know, what can you really do without your phone or technology to help you, guide you. Good Samaritan or survivalist? So much in this book and it seemed like it sped through!
I feel like I should learn some survivalist skills and stock up on tinned foods etc!!

Leave the World Behind is one of those books that catches you by surprise and you'll be thinking about for days after. I felt very strange leaving the house after reading the book as the events really get to you.

It starts off very average - sounding like a family holiday to the ideal airbnb in the middle of nowhere. After a while, they and you get the impression that something is very wrong, especially when the owners of the house turn up.

It has a real dystopian feel about it and like most successful dystopian novels, the disaster or change in the world is only hinted at. Also, the ending has that hint of hope, which is all that can be dreamed for at the end.

A fantastic and addicting read exploring race, class, and family dynamics--less an apocalypse novel and more of a family drama, but it will keep you up late reading more. One of my favourite reads of the year!

This was a slow burn, and at one point I considered giving up on it. I'm so glad I didn't! This is an absolutely astonishing book, and I will be urging every customer in my shop to read it. I will be reading it again, now I have read the story I will want to go back again to experience the exquisite writing without hurrying to get some answers.