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A review by thebustadotjpg
Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam
medium-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
I love apocalypse books. End of the world scenarios are my absolute jam, so I was excited to read this, but boy does this thing fall flat. It frustrates me because this could’ve been good, it just has so many fatal flaws that make it unworthy of your time.
First issue is the characters. I hate them. We have a middle class white family that we follow most of the time. The husband is quite possibly the stupidest man alive. If you painted a tunnel onto a mountainside he’d drive right into it and crumple up like Wile E. Coyote. Just an absolutely feckless, spineless, drooling, useless character who’s brain’s only function is to write lifestyle articles for the New York Times. The you have his wife, whose function is to be a huge bitch. She’s racist, she hates her stupid husband, and she has the uncanny ability to always make the wrong decisions and emotionally fly off the handle whenever it looks like something might inconvenience her. Then you’ve got their two snot nosed brat kids that exist to create problems for the adults to deal with. Everyone sucks. Even the older black couple, Ruth and George Washington (I am not kidding), who I initially believed I was supposed to be sympathetic to, are written in such a way that make them off putting as well. So I’ve got a house full of people that I don’t care about now, and the conversations they have with each other remind me of work meetings where everyone just talks in circles for hours and nothing gets accomplished. Seriously, every conversation in this book happens two or three times, and nothing ends up mattering in the end anyway.
We have a third person narrator even more useless than the dad, who is constantly explaining that things may or may not be happening, which makes for a really gripping thriller. Don’t worry, even if you didn’t read this, you already know just as much about what the apocalypse “event” of the book is than I do, because it never gets named. It sounds terrible. There sure are a lot of graphic descriptions of people dying and getting murdered, but hell if I know what from. Is it a war? Disease? The second coming of Christ? Who knows! Doesn’t matter.
The prose is so pretentious it’s dripping. Seriously bust out the thesaurus for this one. The author strikes me as extremely horny, as the amount of times a sexual metaphor is used is absurd. We also get a good description of a sixteen year old jerking off and some weird stuff about how his thirteen year old sister’s swimsuit fits on her body. Awesome! Definitely wanted to read that!
Overall very pointless book that had the chance to say something poignant about race and class and sexism during times of strife, but totally squanders it so the author can flex how many big words he knows and how many unnecessary sexual metaphors he can fit into one book. Some of the writing is good, and this could be salvageable if you cut out most of the beginning before the other couple shows up and actually had something get resolved at the end instead of the absolute non-ending that’s in there now. Man what a load of crap. Two stars because some of the writing is good and effective but this could be tightened up so much and be something I would’ve loved.
First issue is the characters. I hate them. We have a middle class white family that we follow most of the time. The husband is quite possibly the stupidest man alive. If you painted a tunnel onto a mountainside he’d drive right into it and crumple up like Wile E. Coyote. Just an absolutely feckless, spineless, drooling, useless character who’s brain’s only function is to write lifestyle articles for the New York Times. The you have his wife, whose function is to be a huge bitch. She’s racist, she hates her stupid husband, and she has the uncanny ability to always make the wrong decisions and emotionally fly off the handle whenever it looks like something might inconvenience her. Then you’ve got their two snot nosed brat kids that exist to create problems for the adults to deal with. Everyone sucks. Even the older black couple, Ruth and George Washington (I am not kidding), who I initially believed I was supposed to be sympathetic to, are written in such a way that make them off putting as well. So I’ve got a house full of people that I don’t care about now, and the conversations they have with each other remind me of work meetings where everyone just talks in circles for hours and nothing gets accomplished. Seriously, every conversation in this book happens two or three times, and nothing ends up mattering in the end anyway.
We have a third person narrator even more useless than the dad, who is constantly explaining that things may or may not be happening, which makes for a really gripping thriller. Don’t worry, even if you didn’t read this, you already know just as much about what the apocalypse “event” of the book is than I do, because it never gets named. It sounds terrible. There sure are a lot of graphic descriptions of people dying and getting murdered, but hell if I know what from. Is it a war? Disease? The second coming of Christ? Who knows! Doesn’t matter.
The prose is so pretentious it’s dripping. Seriously bust out the thesaurus for this one. The author strikes me as extremely horny, as the amount of times a sexual metaphor is used is absurd. We also get a good description of a sixteen year old jerking off and some weird stuff about how his thirteen year old sister’s swimsuit fits on her body. Awesome! Definitely wanted to read that!
Overall very pointless book that had the chance to say something poignant about race and class and sexism during times of strife, but totally squanders it so the author can flex how many big words he knows and how many unnecessary sexual metaphors he can fit into one book. Some of the writing is good, and this could be salvageable if you cut out most of the beginning before the other couple shows up and actually had something get resolved at the end instead of the absolute non-ending that’s in there now. Man what a load of crap. Two stars because some of the writing is good and effective but this could be tightened up so much and be something I would’ve loved.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content
Minor: Body horror and Racism