Baseball bat in hand, Clay opens the door to find two strangers, G.H. And when the haze of a post-dinner slumber is interrupted by a knock at the door in the middle of the night, the already wilting harmony that holds the family together is shattered. Clay, the patriarch, struggles with deep-seated insecurities that threaten to disrupt his steadfast exterior. Amanda tags her phone like another limb, unable to forget about work obligations. Hormonal Archie, desperate to ditch boyhood and enter adulthood, grapples with adolescent preoccupations. Newly-turned 13-year-old Rose longs to be reunited with her friend Hazel. Despite the illusion of spending “quality” time together, each family member is burdened with nagging distractions that whisk them away from the reverie that is their holiday. The initial awkwardness of living in someone else’s home is dispelled within minutes.īut like so many other literary thrillers, something immediately seems off. Kicking off their shoes, stocking the fridge, and firing up the barbecue for grilled burgers, the family’s cramped city apartment is all but a distant memory. The sleek grey marble kitchen, en-suite bathrooms and shimmering aquamarine waters of the adjoining pool and hot tub allow the family to indulge in the fantasy of living like the New York elite, even if just for a few days. Upon arriving at the Airbnb, the luxurious, fully-furnished house is strikingly incongruent with the untouched vastness of the surrounding forests which appear to go on for miles. Playing on these mounting fears - that ring true now more than ever - what happens when two complete strangers show up at your door in the dead of night, pleading for a place to stay? In a crisis, are we the Good Samaritans we so desperately want to be, or does our primal instinct to survive supersede the needs of others?įleeing the bustling crowds and suffocating heat of New York City, white, middle-class couple Clay and Amanda, and their two children Archie and Rose, head for the idyllic and remote grounds of Long Island, for a one-week, end-of-summer holiday. It is this last point that Rumaan Alam explores in his newest and eerily timely novel, “Leave the World Behind”. Our front doors now mark the last frontier between the safety of the indoors and the growing danger that exists outside. While before lockdown, weekends were for entertaining friends, the mere thought of welcoming guests into our house now is akin to breaking the law. But perhaps the greatest change is the idea that homes have become a sort of bunker a protective barrier from the outside world.

From transforming our bedrooms into fitness centres to sharing the dining table as a workspace with flatmates, the lines between the living room and the office, the kitchen and the pub, have all but blurred. Since the start of lockdown, the concept of “home” has assumed many different meanings.

Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam