They pack up the car (“not so new as to be luxurious or so old as to be bohemian”) and head out of town.Īlam’s two previous novels, “Rich and Pretty” and “That Kind of Mother,” have proved he’s gifted with an acidic wit, one he uses to break down contemporary life at the cellular level. “The Ultimate Escape,” the listing proclaimed before launching into “chummy advertising-speak” to describe the place. There’s an Airbnb, far off the GPS-beaten path, “extraordinary and only $340 a day,” made all the more alluring by its lack of cellphone access. Rumaan Alam inhabits the head space of Amanda and Clay, denizens of New York City, parents of a teenage son and adolescent daughter, who slouch toward Long Island for summer vacation - only to discover that life as they know it is over. The literary suspense of “Leave the World Behind” hinges on that familiar guilt-tinged longing for a vacation that never ends.
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