Leave the World Behind

This was odd. Everything that every other review mentions is true, from the constantly switching perspective, to the lack of anything happening, yadda yadda. And for the first half of this book I was constantly ready to quit reading. I was sure it was going to be a three star read if I did finish it, because the setup is interesting and the writing, while occasionally insufferable, was actually fun to read. By the time I'd hit the halfway point, I was used to the switching perspectives and the tension and fear in the characters was starting to crank up.

I think the biggest problem with this book is a lack of proper editing. The worst parts for me are the ones where someone should have told Alam: “Listen, I love this, but it is not as effective when it goes on for a paragraph rather than a couple of sentences.” I think of the moments where this happens as Alam spinning off into the air. Like yes, it would be interesting to have a character think about how his flip flops will someday be cut up by people of color in another country to be made into something new and sold to white people again. Having him think this while he is desperately searching for his daughter feels like I was running and then someone took a baseball bat with the word “Digression” burned onto it and hit me in the head.

I loved the ending, because the journey in this book is not about the apocalypse, but rather how people act when the world is falling apart and they don't know what to do. In other words, most people's daily lives right now. I did not care about learning what was going on by the last third of the book, because I was wrapped up in the characters and how they each dealt with their panic and confusion differently. I don't want to know why people's teeth started falling out or what those planes were going to do or even what was happening with the world outside. That's not the point. The point is that all we can do is keep going, no matter how bad things get. That's why I'm giving it four stars. It should not have spent so much time in digressions, especially in the beginning before the tension has even started, because that was a slog to get through. Once the tension starts, Alam has a restraint put on the wild word wanderings of his brain, and it becomes much more focused. I blazed through the last hundred pages of this and almost cried twice.

tl;dr A lot of work should have been done before this was published, but the final third was so good that it gets an extra star from me.

P.S. Reading the sex scenes in this book felt like I snuck into the pages of the Necronomicon. I'm glad I got to read it, but a part of my mind and soul has been forever damaged.