Leave the World Behind - Rumaan Alam

 

I'm so old  I can remember a time when there was no such thing as the Internet. So I view and use it with a degree of balance, I hope. There are things I still won't use it for, e.g. Internet banking. The less financial information out there online of mine, I think the better and the less likely I am to be compromised by these insidious hackers that seem to enjoy messing up peoples' lives, just because they can. It's not because I'm rich, it's the principle, mind you it irritates the hell out of people who can't understand me!  It concerns me how we have placed so much blind faith and trust in a technology that when it fails will cause so much chaos and disaster, it doesn't bear thinking about. The Internet is useful but I refuse to put all my eggs in one basket. Nothing is foolproof. Everything is fallible. The Internet will fail one day by one means or another, which brings me to Leave the World Behind

There's been a lot of buzz about this book, some because of the Netflix film I think. I've read the book and I've watched the film. As with most film adaptations devotees of the book will find that, to them, liberties have been taken. To an extent, that's inevitable when you're using a completely different creative medium. What the book accomplishes with words cannot be accomplished visually so the film relies on a great deal of suspenseful music and cutting from one scene to another to create a very atmospheric piece. Details from the book and the film differ and may upset the purists. I did find myself asking why in the film, it's G.H's daughter called Ruth who is with him and not his wife, Maya. In the book, Ruth is his wife and Maya his daughter, but I guess the impact of the wife on the plane was thought to create a greater emotional response. Some of the sequences in the film do not appear in the book at all. And the ending? The film offers us even less closure than the book but does it matter? I guess not in the broadest sense. The film is there to entertain an audience who may not be readers. And the book exists for those who prefer not to watch films. And in some cases there are those who are happy to do both!

But the essence of both film and book remains the same. What happens when you have no Internet, you have no TV, your Satnav can't work and no one seems to know what the hell is going on because news cannot be disseminated without the World Wide Web. So there's mistrust and suspicion. It's a 21st century plague for sure. 

I think that Alam has created such a sustained sense of unease though the book punctuated by the symbols from nature telling us all that something is very very wrong - the volume of deer, so often a symbol of peace and gentleness, the flamingos in the wrong place  - it's nature yelling at us that there is a huge problem but somehow our characters don't seem to grasp it - the flamingos were probably from a private zoo opines one character. But I felt at the root of it all was the reluctance to accept that they wren in the midst of a disaster. They tried to explain things rationally and yet you knew that deep inside they were all too scared to admit that the world was in flux. The sense of impending disaster is never far from the surface but in actual fact any actual disaster is implicit. We are left to guess whether the US is on the brink of some kind of war, cyber or military, or whether there has been a global technological disaster. However the characters all seem desperate to retain some normality in the face of these inexplicable occurrences and brain piercing noises which they manifest usually in the form of some kind of food or drink! 

Earlier in the book it seems that the issues were those of race and class and there is something mildly encouraging about how all that dissipates within the midst of mutual disaster as this disparate group find themselves relying on each other. 

I didn't find the characters especially likeable. Amanda seemed so angry and snarky in spite of what might appear to be a privileged lifestyle. But fear is driving them and does this show their true character or merely one facet? 

I'm not entirely sure what Alam was hoping to achieve with this book. Was it to show what panic can do to a group of people initially separated by class and race? Or was it to expose the weakness of our society when you strip it of its technological safety blanket? Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the book immensely. It was absorbing and compelling writing that offers a reader plenty of food for thought. Perhaps I'm simply left with a sense of unease that a situation like this could be just around the corner?

I received a copy of the book and a delicious bag of popcorn from Tandem Collective.

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