You know what kind of woman makes sure to buy the pebbly mud-colored mustard on her beach vacation. You can tell even at the beginning, before the horror begins to emerge, because Alam describes all of these luxuries with a loving precision that becomes its own form of judgment. Because Leave the World Behind does not think that the pleasures it is cataloging are neutral pleasures that can be enjoyed and then abandoned without thought. The trance only lasts for moments, though. At times, reading Leave the World Behind can put you in something approaching the same state of blank tranquility you find scrolling through a lifestyle influencer’s Instagram feed. All-white linens in the bathroom and the laundry soap hidden in a tasteful wooden box. Pasta tossed with herbs and garlic and that salted European butter that comes in a cylinder. Marble countertops and a copper pot-filler at the stove. This book is nearly encyclopedic in its accounting of the pleasures of modern bourgeois American life. The big thing in Rumaan Alam’s Leave the World Behind, the Vox Book Club’s June pick, is all of the, well, things.
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