Review: Leave the World Behind

Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I am once again gobsmacked at the inordinate number of five star reviews for a book that is obtuse, obscure and tedious. From the very first pages, this author’s pretentious use of vocabulary makes reading an experience akin to swimming through a thesaurus.

Myriad examples of this author’s self-indulgent style litter the pages. Instead of saying the occupants of the car weren’t paying attention: “None of them really saw the highway landscape. The brain abets the eye; eventually your expectations of a thing supersede the thing itself.” Instead of saying Archie ordered chicken nuggets: “Archie requested a grotesque number of little briquettes of fried chicken. He dumped these into a paper bag, mixed in some French fries, dribbled in the contents of a small foil-topped container of a sweet and sticky brown sauce, and chewed contentedly.” Seriously? If, as some authors contend, every word should “matter”, It’s clear that author Rumaan Alam didn’t get the memo.

I will concede that there are some interesting stylistic choices made by Alam. As the book climbs to its climax and panic sets in, Alam feeds those fires by clipping his sentences and sending in dialogue that is short, brusque and staccato. Conversations also become more introspective, internalized and needy, as underdeveloped characters search for meaning given limited context for what is happening around them. When their situation becomes more dire and one of the children falls ill with grotesque side effects, it is presented with disturbing objectivity—the severity diminished by the group’s reluctance to acknowledge it. They are by that time making decisions, or not making decisions, paralyzed by their fears that may or may not be justified. Like Schrödinger’s cat, the supposed catastrophic event both exists and doesn’t exist as they are swept up in alternating waves of acceptance and denial. That they move between these conditions becomes disconcerting and disorienting; surreal and hazy. That they may be facing the consequences of a world turning against itself, in which case children die and difficult choices are made, is far too grim to consider and is at once countered by their implied hope that they are wrong and help is a short drive away.

At the point where these characters finally do decide to take action, the book abruptly ends, almost mid-thought, leaving the reader flipping pages, convinced something must have been missed. Surely, SURELY, no author would just....stop? And yet....there it is. A betrayal by the author after committing to the read—an assumed pay off pulled from under the reader, resulting not in the smooth finale of the magician who expertly slips the tablecloth from beneath settings of fine china, but rather in a “toes to the edge of the ledge” position, looking for that safety net and instead gazing down into a dark void of absolutely nothing.

Disappointing at best, any redeeming qualities lost to the shock of a conclusion that was apparently left on the cutting room floor. The avant- guard reach was, in the end, a bridge too far and made it impossible for this reader to forgive a plethora of sins committed in the name of author hubris.


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