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It’s remarkable that Alam was able to make me feel so on edge while I was reading this book because when you look at the story overall, you realize the characters are never subject to very much direct action. You could fairly say that their lives could be divided in two: the period before they’d heard that noise and the period after (127). You didn’t hear such a noise you experienced it, endured it, survived it, witnessed it. This was a noise, yes, but one so loud that it was almost a physical presence, so sudden because of course there was no precedent…Of course they’d never heard a noise like that before. I want to share an excerpt because Alam does an incredible job of describing something completely indescribable: I think I was actually physically sweating when I read this part of the book. Most eerily, one afternoon, the two families are shaken to their cores when they hear an unidentifiable, Earth-shattering noise. But strange things are happening around their little Long Island bubble: a herd of a thousand deer wanders through the woods behind the house, a woman approaches Clay’s car, sobbing and speaking in rapid Spanish. The four main characters know close to nothing, so we, as readers, are in the same boat. Then there’s the tension around what in the world is happening in New York. When the world is ending, who has the right to bunker down in the Long Island house, the Airbnb guests paying to stay there for the week, or the owners with the title to the property?

Amanda’s first thought after their arrival, when she’s trying to assess whether to believe their story: “This didn’t seem to her like the sort of house where black people lived” (38). With no internet or phones, Amanda and Clay have no way of confirming the older couple’s story after they arrive at the Long Island house.

Amanda and Clay are white, Ruth and GH are Black. First, there’s the dynamic between the two couples, home owners and home renters. Tension oozes out of every part of this novel. Suddenly, the phones are down, the TV isn’t working, and the internet won’t load. GH and Ruth say they are fleeing Manhattan, where a city-wide blackout has made their fourteenth-floor apartment inaccessible. One night, the elderly couple who owns the home, GH and Ruth, show up on the doorstep. Amanda and Clay rent a home (decked out with a hot tub and pool) on Long Island for a summer getaway with their two teenagers. Leave the World Behind is the story of a family vacation gone very, very wrong. The first word that comes to mind when I think about the novel Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam is “eerie.” I felt like I was on edge the entire time I was reading this book, waiting on high alert for a monster to pop out of every page.