Reviews tagging 'Alcohol'

Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam

39 reviews

chris_reads's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.5

Things happened and I felt nothing. 

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cyndi1966's review against another edition

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challenging slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0


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cheye13's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I can see why this is a divisive book. Personally, I found it middling.

I found the character dynamics interesting - complex and conflicted enough to be worth following, but not contentious enough to be simply unpleasant. The book's strength lies in the roundedness of the characters (at least the adults).

It does feel unfinished, like a sentence missing a period. I'm not entirely sure what the message of the story is. It could have one message if a catastrophe weren't confirmed to the reader, and it was a sort of modern Monsters Due on Maple Street. It could have another if we (the reader) knew the intent or nature of the crisis. It'd have yet another if we saw just one plot point further into the story.

Not an unpleasant reading experience, but unclear what to take away.

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krys_kilz's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

This book was a difficult read. The pacing was quite slow and it's mostly character driven. It took me a few days to get through the whole thing. The plot remained vague all the way through to the ambiguous ending and the reader never gets any answers about what's going on. 

I understand how that might be frustrating for many readers. Initially I was frustrated too, but as I sat with it after finishing, I honestly found the book's entire concept and execution extremely clever. Alam's writing style was superb and his sharp commentary on the delusion of whiteness, the illusion of safety, the fragility of life, ignorance/denial, and colonial modernity felt very on the nose. 

This novel doesn't really feel like a thriller. To me, it reads more as satire with light dystopian undertones. The entire story really zeroes in on the fear of the unknown, of uncertainty especially in the so called "age of information." The overwhelm of not knowing what is happening or what will happen next along with the sheer volume of things that can and are going wrong. And the certain hubris of whiteness that nothing bad can ever really happen to you. 

The book's ending perfectly encapsulates those fears by mirroring them back to the reader - providing scant to no clues about what has happened or what will happen next and cheekily asking if we don't know how this will end, how is that different than any other day?

If you go into this book expecting a tense, edge of your seat thriller with lots of conflict and big twists, you will certainly be disappointed. This book is not those things. For me, it was more quiet. Subtle. As Alam says in a profile with Vulture, "I write about the living embodiment of a certain kind of blindness."

"Ruth had learned only one thing from the current reality, and it was that everything held together by tacit agreement that it would. All it took to unravel something was one party deciding to do just that. There was no real structure to prevent chaos, there was only a collective faith in order."

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_fallinglight_'s review against another edition

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challenging dark informative mysterious reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Rumaan Alam did entirely too much with the writing style for this book. It felt like this was a play but switched to literary social/apocalyptic horror novel last minute. In the first 30-ish percent the writing is jarring, almost insulting (maybe part of the point?) with the weird metaphors and descriptors and detached ironic word play but once we get a few lines of what's happening to the world and even tiny glimpses of the future, it was very evocative and finally pulled me into the situation even if the characters were absolutely grating. (Also reading this right now while WWIII was trending on twitter and Putin is talking sh%t added to the scary scale.) This book is spooky, not stomach clenching scary, but unnerving just the same. In spite of the kinda atrocious writing I liked the experience of reading this. I did leave my world behind lol 

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doodeedoda's review against another edition

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mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

2.0


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biblio_reckah's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

I flew through this one at break neck speed. A fascinating character study on the human condition as it pertains to unknown events. Fans of Jeff Vandermeer will love this one.

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bootsmom3's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0


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genny's review against another edition

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mysterious reflective tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I really enjoyed the tone of this. Quietly scary with a palpable sense of dread. I was freaking out because I couldn't imagine how it would end, and it kind of...doesn't? Don't read this if you don't like open endings or having a lot of things left to the imagination. The story heavily hints at
the beginning of the end of the world
but we're restricted to a very isolated POV. The characters don't know what's going on, we don't know what's going on, but an omniscient narrator occasionally does tell us what's going on...in the outside world, far from the main cast. I thought it was clever, but judging from other reviews, this is a polarizing book. There's really no closure to be had here, yet it worked for me. I'm not sure how but that ending punched me in the gut! Plenty to chew on.

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alexisgarcia's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

This was an insane read. I’m slightly new to reading thrillers, it was a genre I never really read (no idea why) until recently. This book was incredibly bone chilling and unpredictable. I was surprised that I was never able to guess what was happening next which I was very excited by. I don’t think the characters were incredibly well developed but the book was on the shorter side and character development didn’t seem to be a main aspect of the book so I never minded. This is one of the most captivating thrillers I’ve yet and would definitely recommend!

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