It forces the reader to think about institutionalized discrimination (most specifically racism, but homophobia and sexism are very much present as well) all the while depicting a lockdown situation that’s uncomfortably familiar to most of us reading it now. They kept asking what happened? Why didn’t anyone do x, y, or z? Is this really going to end without the world being saved? Why did Amanda and Clay and the rest of them just stay home and make food instead of saving the day? It is definitely an uncomfortable read, because it mirrors real life more than the traditional story structures we’re so used to. When my book club read Leave the World Behind, almost everyone was upset by the book’s lack of clear-cut answers and savior storyline.

I think that’s why people are so uncomfortable with this novel. The best I can hope is that I wouldn’t make things actively worse. I wish I’d be the person to save the day, but I know I definitely wouldn’t. Most people want to believe that, if it came down to it, they’d be the one to save the day. I’ve talked about books and movies with enough people to get the impression that people think of themselves as the hero in the story. I think I’m in the minority in that I’ve always known that in a crisis situation I’d be the one quietly cowering in the corner (or maybe loudly cowering, but definitely in the corner and definitely cowering). But you can’t just ignore a cataclysmic event just because it’s, like, kind of annoying. Book club has moved to Zoom and everyone acts like that’s a giant imposition because it’s not as much fun. We’re in the middle of a pandemic and everyone is all I’m bored of this let me throw a crowded party because heaven forbid I change my day-to-day activities to stop the spread of a plague. The characters are all normal people, and when the world is ending normal people keep their heads down and try to go about their day as much as is possible. The difference between Leave the World Behind and those other books is that there is no Katniss Everdeen. I’ve read lots of dystopian novels I love YA, and dystopia is a staple of YA. This one is about a family isolated in their house while the world collapses around them. Like I said when I talked about The Pull of the Stars: when things are going badly in the world, my impulse is often to retreat into escapist fiction.

I say this a lot about books I was assigned to read for book club: I would not have read this if left to my own devices. It’s the kind of book that will stick with you, make you think about things you need to think about, and force you to confront things you’d rather not. It’s a fantastic book: well-written, socially aware, terrifying, and completely comfortable dwelling on the uncertainties that so many of us would rather ignore. Rumaan Alam’s novel Leave the World Behind has been getting a lot of hype recently, and for good reason.

Review leave the world behind