Clay is a tenured professor of media studies (even Amanda acknowledges at one point that she doesn't really know what "media studies" signifies). Ultimately, though, the evidence can't be denied: Instead of a literary "beach novel" we've landed in an up-to-the-minute version of On The Beach, Nevil Shute's 1957 novel that used to be required high school reading about a looming apocalypse.Īs so many novels do, Leave the World Behind begins with a journey: Our vacationers, Amanda and Clay, are on the Long Island Expressway driving out to the Hamptons with their two teenage kids in tow. We readers, like that vacationing couple, dismiss the signs at first: We're lulled by that pool and hot tub and those burgers on the grill. When, deep into the night, a vacationing couple hears a knock at the door of their remote Airbnb rental in the Hamptons, as a reader you think, "Oh, this is a suspense story." Then, when that couple, who are white, opens the door to a couple outside who are Black and conversational awkwardness ensues, you think, "Oh, this is a comedy of manners about race, a kind of edgy riff on Guess Who's Coming to Dinner."īoth impressions are correct: Leave the World Behind simultaneously continues to be a thriller and a deft comedy of manners but, very slowly a different kind of story creeps in and takes over.
Rumaan Alam's Leave the World Behind is a slippery and duplicitous marvel of a novel.
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