Mysterious stranger noise fallout shelter12/24/2023 ![]() ![]() Readers are slyly encouraged by Alam to share Amanda's hesitations: Even to themselves, G.H. By his age, black men were adept at this gesture." Ruth, G.H.'s wife, "looked like the kind of woman you'd see in a television ad for an osteoporosis medication." Alam describes George, who goes by his initials G.H., standing, holding "up his hands in a gesture that was either conciliatory or said Don't shoot. His wit takes on an explicitly socially conscious dimension when that Black couple in their 60s knocks at the door late on the second night of the family's vacation stay. Amanda is an account director, a job which, she confesses, largely means the daily "sending of emails assessing the job itself." They're a securely middle class, white, liberal couple, which means they're the quintessential soft target for satire and Alam merrily proceeds to peel away their self-delusions in this opening section of the novel. Clay is a tenured professor of media studies (even Amanda acknowledges at one point that she doesn't really know what "media studies" signifies). Ultimately, though, the evidence can't be denied: Instead of a literary "beach novel" we've landed in an up-to-the-minute version of On The Beach, Nevil Shute's 1957 novel that used to be required high school reading about a looming apocalypse.Īs so many novels do, Leave the World Behind begins with a journey: Our vacationers, Amanda and Clay, are on the Long Island Expressway driving out to the Hamptons with their two teenage kids in tow. We readers, like that vacationing couple, dismiss the signs at first: We're lulled by that pool and hot tub and those burgers on the grill. ![]()
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