“She walked down the steps onto the damp grass and the deer just watched her, barely curious. She hadn’t even seen that there was another beside it – no more…
…Had she been up higher, she’d have understood that there were hundreds, more than a thousand, more than that, even.”
Never has a description of deer been so utterly terrifying.
This is the first of Rumaan Alam's novels that I have read, and it had me feeling tense, terrified and thrilled all at once, in a way I found simply mind-blowing. For me this is a masterpiece and I will definitely be reading more of his work.
In Leave The World Behind, we meet Amanda, Clay and their two children Rosie and Archie (I’m not sure that we ever know their surname). A wonderful, vivid sense of place is established from the very first chapter, which paints such a detailed picture of a family of four in a car. We’re seeing who they are as a family, how they think, their reliance on technology and being connected, the state of their car, their smells, in just a few pages. It’s just them in their own bubble off on holiday to a big house in remote part of Long Island. And it starts off so well “Well the sun was shining, they felt that boded well…”
My my what a false sense of security, because reading back, I think this is perhaps a teaser to the way in which the author builds a whole unsettling world - outwards from the shelter of a safe ‘bubble’ which later takes the form of a lavish, isolated, AirBnB rental home. We like the central characters, spend the rest of the novel fearful of and questioning everything else outside of that boundary. The turning point is a knock on the door late into the evening, and the arrival of two strangers.
One of the things I loved most about this book was the beautiful conflict between a sense of urgency and stillness throughout which is also reflected in the vivid and evocative prose. This has us the reader viewing characters, their actions, and human nature through a microscopic lens and really builds the tension throughout. It will leave you hungry for more and racing through chapter after chapter.
Amanda and Clay are very real characters, and amidst an unnerving backdrop I felt the author interwove and explored themes of parenthood, racism, classism, relationships, and our reliance on technology in the modern world, really well.
What is happening and who can be trusted all remain to be seen.
*SPOILER ALERT* Next paragraphs contain spoilers
The fact that we don’t find out what the big bad is for me the best and most unnerving thing of all. This is not a novel where everything is neatly squared off and they live happily ever after, that would spoil it. Throughout we’re warned that there really IS a big bad, after first thinking the big bad was the knock at the door and arrival of two strangers in the night (I was thinking at this point it was an extra terrestrial big bad), then thinking killer deer…no…or some form of sonic boom, earthquake, terrorist attack, war?
Are they the last to survive some terrible disaster? Is anyone else alive? We don’t know. This feels like real people dealing with scenarios disaster movies have had us all ‘preparing’ for for life, and their reactions feel all the more real. Pink vomit and teeth mysteriously falling out as well as the prospect of endless nothing is for me the most terrifying thing of all.
The ending feels like a question…what happens next? We don't know and I don't think we want to...
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