Leave the World Behind

My thanks to Bloomsbury U.K. Audio for a review copy via NetGalley of the audiobook edition of ‘Leave the World Behind’ by Rumaan Alam in exchange for an honest review. It was narrated by Marin Ireland and has a running time is 7 hours, 25 minutes at 1x speed.

This novel left me reeling! It’s a restrained work of literary speculative fiction, yet extraordinary in its scope. It is almost play-like in its small cast of characters and the atmospheric woodland setting.

New Yorkers Amanda and Clay head with their teenage son and daughter for a holiday in a remote corner of Long Island where they have rented a luxury home for the week. Yet as they are settling in there is a late night knock at the door. Standing there are an older couple, Ruth and G.H. Washington, who announce themselves as the house owners.

They are in a panic and bring news that a sudden blackout had hit New York City causing them to head back to their country home. Yet with the internet and TV down and no phone service, can Amanda and Clay trust this couple?

That Amanda and Clay are white and middle class and the Washingtons are black and wealthy bring aspects of racism and class into the narrative. At one point Amanda thinks to herself: “This didn’t seem to her like the sort of house where black people lived,” and then questions why that thought had so easily come to her. After some awkwardness the two couples work together in order to figure out what’s going on.

Odd things happen, including the local deer behaving in strange ways. Then there’s the noise. “This was a noise, yes, but one so loud that it was almost a physical presence, so sudden because of course there was no precedent. There was nothing (real life!), and then there was a noise. Of course they’d never heard a noise like that before. You didn’t hear such a noise; you experienced it, endured it, survived it, witnessed it. You could fairly say that their lives could be divided into two: the period before they’d heard that noise and the period after.”

The hope that this is just something minor and explainable contrasts with the universal narrator providing tantalising glimpses of events that are occurring in the wider world.

In terms of the audiobook, I will admit that there were a few scenes that caused me to blush. Still overall, I found Marin Ireland’s performance excellent and she drew me into the narrative completely. She is a well established American actor with an impressive résumé, including theatre. She’s won a number of awards for her work with audiobooks, including a 2020 AudioFile Earphones Award for ‘Leave the World Behind’.

I consider this one of the best novels that I have read in 2020. Given its release during the pandemic, it effectively identifies the disquiet running through society and even the denial of reality evident in some quarters.

I expect that it will be quickly hailed as a modern classic to stand alongside works such as Cormac McCarthy's ‘The Road’. I also feel that its multilayered narrative and accessibility will make it a popular choice for reading groups. I certainly will be suggesting it to mine for 2021.

No surprise given its quality and topicality that it has been quickly optioned by Netflix.