Leave the World Behind
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?
- Pages
- 288
- First published
- October 6, 2020
- Language
- English
- Edition
- Ebook
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Shelved by 1 Litcadian
Reviews
- mysteriousreflectiveSlow-paced
Started July 14, 2025 · Finished July 15, 2025
I went into this expecting a suspenseful, apocalyptic thriller — what I got was a confusing, meandering novel that tried way too hard to be profound and instead ended up feeling hollow and frustrating. The first half is basically just random, mundane conversations between characters I couldn’t connect with, interrupted occasionally by vague panic. Any real suspense doesn’t even show up until halfway through, and even then, it’s more baffling than gripping. The writing style made it even worse: long-winded, repetitive, and constantly jumping between everyone’s thoughts mid-paragraph. It was chaotic in a bad way and made it really hard to stay engaged. Character development? Nonexistent. For a book that seems to want to explore human behavior in crisis, the fact that I felt absolutely nothing for any of these people is a major flaw. And then there’s the weirdness. Random unsettling animal moments, a mysterious illness that’s never explained, and a complete lack of closure. Nothing is resolved. No answers are given. I closed this book more confused than when I started. This might be a book that works for a specific reader — someone who likes open-ended literary fiction with vague metaphorical commentary — but that reader is definitely not me.