I’ve been branching out with my reading in the last week! After posting about some amazing fantastical fiction just the other day, today I am back to tell you about a reading experience that kept me in constant suspense and was one of the most exciting/stressful/disturbing books I’ve read for some time:
Leave the World Behind: A Novel
by Rumaan Alam
This book starts out like domestic fiction. A family is taking an AirBnb vacation to a beautiful home in the middle of nowhere, Long Island. On their second night, a couple claiming to be the home’s owners knocks at the door. They say they escaping a black out in New York. The phones and TVs are down in Long Island.
Is this couple who they say they are? What has happened in New York?
We live in a society where we know everything the minute it happens, but imagine if all technology went down. The power is off, you can’t call anyone, you can’t watch breaking news. How would you figure out what was going on? What if you were with strangers in the middle of nowhere?
The story moves along with amazing suspense and glorious descriptive writing (sometimes too much but I can appreciate it). And the author uses a technique where he shares a character’s thought and then immediately goes into omniscient view, like, “These words were not true, but she did not know that.” The result is a slow burning, constant suspense, that is an amazing reading experience though also disturbing. I was telling my husband about it half-way through and he said wow I think I’d even like that. Issues of class and race are also explored.
This may not be what some people want to read right now due to the tumultuous times we are already in, and I can understand that. But if you think you can handle it, please read it now so I can discuss with someone!