Leave the World Behind

A Novel

Now a Netflix film starring Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke, Myha'la, Farrah Mackenzie, Charlie Evans and Kevin Bacon. Written for the Screen and Directed by Sam Esmail. Executive Producers Barack and Michelle Obama, Tonia Davis, Daniel M. Stillman, Nick Krishnamurthy, Rumaan Alam

A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick!

Finalist for the 2020 National Book Award in Fiction

One of Barack Obama's Summer Reads

A Best Book of the Year From: The Washington Post * Time * NPR * Elle * Esquire * Kirkus * Library Journal * The Chicago Public Library * The New York Public Library * BookPage * The Globe and Mail * EW.com * The LA Times * USA Today * InStyle * The New Yorker * AARP * Publisher's Lunch * LitHub * Book Marks * Electric Literature * Brooklyn Based * The Boston Globe

A magnetic novel about two families, strangers to each other, who are forced together on a long weekend gone terribly wrong.

From the bestselling author of Rich and Pretty comes a suspenseful and provocative novel keenly attuned to the complexities of parenthood, race, and class. Leave the World Behind explores how our closest bonds are reshaped—and unexpected new ones are forged—in moments of crisis.

Amanda and Clay head out to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a vacation: a quiet reprieve from life in New York City, quality time with their teenage son and daughter, and a taste of the good life in the luxurious home they’ve rented for the week. But a late-night knock on the door breaks the spell. Ruth and G. H. are an older couple—it’s their house, and they’ve arrived in a panic. They bring the news that a sudden blackout has swept the city. But in this rural area—with the TV and internet now down, and no cell phone service—it’s hard to know what to believe.

Should Amanda and Clay trust this couple—and vice versa? What happened back in New York? Is the vacation home, isolated from civilization, a truly safe place for their families? And are they safe from one other?

Leave the World Behind

You're going start this book feeling like it's another contemporary fiction about a a white, middle-aged couple with teens. The gorgeous writing will tip you off a few pages in that this is more than that, and just when it pulls you in, (intentional) holes in the prose and plot start to appear.
I struggled to accept this a "thriller", because the slow, intense build is ingrained into the seemingly everyday-ness of the story so well. While the steady release continues once you hit the apex of the book, you're left not wanting to call it anything but that.
While Leave the World Behind is a quick, consuming read, I would not recommend it to anyone who feels triggered by the emotional toll that 2020 had on our society. It left me in a haunted, contemplative mood, wanting more, but also scared to pick it up again.
...as always, narrator Marin Ireland is emotive and engaging without being dramatic. The perfect way to read this book!
Solid 8/10

Worrisome

This book is very good and worrisome. With all that is going on in our world right now I believe this could really happen.

The realistic approach to the storytelling.

The movie is faithful to the book, aside from one character change.
Rumaan Alam has a created a genre that I’ve never experienced before. The apocalyptic unraveling in real time. I loved it and even though the ending is not what I’d hoped, it served its purpose, which is to leave us wanting more of this world building.
Excellent work.

Couldn’t stop listening

Haunting and gave me something to think about. Highly recommend this book. Better than the movie.

Meh-

The person reading the book is great the way the author uses his words strings a sentence together is good as well. But the way it ends shouldn’t have been the way it ended. There was not enough there to end it that way.