You Should Have Left
by Daniel Kehlmann
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Description
"From the internationally best-selling author of Measuring the World and F, an eerie and supernatural tale of a writer's emotional collapse. "It is fitting that I'm beginning a new notebook up here. New surroundings and new ideas, a new beginning. Fresh air." These are the opening lines of the journal kept by the narrator of Daniel Kehlmann's spellbinding new novel: the record of the seven days that he, his wife, and his four-year-old daughter spend in a house they have rented in the show more mountains of Germany--a house that thwarts the expectations of his recollection and seems to defy the very laws of physics. The narrator is eager to finish a screenplay, entitled Marriage, for a sequel to the movie that launched his career, but something he cannot explain is undermining his convictions and confidence, a process he is recording in this account of the uncanny events that unfold as he tries to understand what, exactly, is happening around him--and in himself"-- show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Recommendations
sturlington Surreal houses, possibly haunted.
Member Reviews
A screenwriter on the cusp of failure, with a script to complete, takes his wife and daughter to a vacation house in the mountains so he can work. The couple fights, he can't concentrate, he's warned to leave the house, strange things occur. He sees and senses other dimensions. Apparently people have disappeared there in the past.
He finally comes to a conclusion: "It's the place itself. It's not the house. The house is harmless, it's simply standing where nothing should stand."
The book is sparely written and is more terrifying for it.
He finally comes to a conclusion: "It's the place itself. It's not the house. The house is harmless, it's simply standing where nothing should stand."
The book is sparely written and is more terrifying for it.
I really enjoyed this. I was looking forward to reading it and it did not disappoint. I thought the creeping sense of dread was great and the horror really came through. I enjoyed that you had to pay attention to the things that were said before as it really helps you engage with the book. I thought this was thought provoking and a great read.
So I read this book as a Friday the 13th special, because it was short and had big text so I knew I could finish it in a night and. Jesus Christ. After finishing it, I felt myself thinking, what did I read!?!?! I almost want to re read it immediately to catch all the little things I didn't catch before, the weird things that are brought up and not brought up again, the things that happen out of order... This book really sucked me in and kept me freaking out on every page, everything happens so quickly but the fast pace adds to the strangeness of it. This book was incredible, I'll re read it for sure, and I'm going to recommend it to so many people!!!!
You Should Have Left by Daniel Kehlmann is a horror story novella that warns readers that if an Airbnb seems to be good to be true, it probably is. Under pressure to finish a screenplay, the unnamed narrator takes his wife and four year-old daughter to an isolated Airbnb in the German mountains to work. Narrated though the screenwriter’s journal, the entries describe financial and marital pressures which become increasingly distressing as the narrator begins to see and hear things that no one else does. When his wife leaves after a fight, the narrator is left with his young daughter in a web of horrors that he worries he may never escape.
Just like the off-kilter triangle on the cover, this book will have the reader off-kilter. What is real? What is the troubled narrator's imagination? Experience? The narrator of this short creepy tale is a writer and some of this is his written record and some he is narrating. He and his wife Susanna and their 4-year old daughter Esther have gone to the Tyrolean countryside for a break. The narrator is a screen-writer under pressure and behind deadline to follow earlier success - this will be his chance to focus and write. But in a very isolated house, with just the three of them, it is not going well. There are odd occurrences - a dream? a reflection? a coincidence? but two locals warn him to get out. Tensions mount between him and his show more wife and reach a peak of conflict - but by then it is too late. Eerie and mind-messing, but also a little frustrating. show less
Ein kleiner Kurzurlaub soll es für das junge Ehepaar mit ihrem Kind sein, ein paar Tage in den Bergen in einem einsam gelegenen Haus. Der Vater schreibt an einem neuen Drehbuch und wie selbstverständlich hält er auch Alles fest, was sich während ihres Aufenthaltes ereignet. Die Streitereien zwischen ihm und seiner Frau, die Versöhnungen, die Beschäftigung mit dem Kind, seine Träume undundund. Eigentlich ganz alltäglich, doch es liegt ein seltsamer Missklang über den Dreien, der sich mit jedem Tag, jeder Stunde verstärkt.
Das Seltsame, das Mysteriöse schleicht sich ganz allmählich ein, es ist nicht greifbar, es sind kleine Geschehnisse, die bei wiederholtem Nachdenken sich wohl auch rational erklären lassen. Aber vielleicht show more auch nicht ... Doch sobald das Ungewisse zu stark wird, treten reale Ereignisse in den Vordergrund, die die Aufmerksamkeit beanspruchen und alles Andere verblassen lassen; doch nicht für lange.
Es sind nur 86 Seiten, doch wenn man sich voll und ganz auf die Geschichte einlässt, sie liest, als wäre man selbst der Schreibende, beginnt einen das Unheimliche nach und nach selbst zu ergreifen. Ein tolles Stück Gruselliteratur, das die volle Sternezahl verdient hätte, wenn, ja wenn der Preis nicht wäre. So viel Geld für so ein kleines Büchlein finde ich schlicht unverschämt - dafür gibt es Abzug. show less
Das Seltsame, das Mysteriöse schleicht sich ganz allmählich ein, es ist nicht greifbar, es sind kleine Geschehnisse, die bei wiederholtem Nachdenken sich wohl auch rational erklären lassen. Aber vielleicht show more auch nicht ... Doch sobald das Ungewisse zu stark wird, treten reale Ereignisse in den Vordergrund, die die Aufmerksamkeit beanspruchen und alles Andere verblassen lassen; doch nicht für lange.
Es sind nur 86 Seiten, doch wenn man sich voll und ganz auf die Geschichte einlässt, sie liest, als wäre man selbst der Schreibende, beginnt einen das Unheimliche nach und nach selbst zu ergreifen. Ein tolles Stück Gruselliteratur, das die volle Sternezahl verdient hätte, wenn, ja wenn der Preis nicht wäre. So viel Geld für so ein kleines Büchlein finde ich schlicht unverschämt - dafür gibt es Abzug. show less
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You Should Have Left by author Daniel Kehlmann is imaginatively written in such a way that you're reading a scriptwriter's notes from his notebook, as he is writing them. The main character bares his soul about his life, his thoughts and dreams. Much of it is mundane everyday stuff, until you realise that what is being said actually has a very different meaning. Darker and mo
re horrific than it at first may seem.
Writing his screenplay, and lying to his boss about his progress, the screenwriter takes his family, wife Susanna, and four-year old Esther to what he wants to be a writer's retreat. Yeah, it does sound rather like The Shining. But show more even though there's less of it, there's even more to it... Stick with me. I'll explain.
Things are not going as planned, for this unnamed writer. His marriage is on the rocks and his screenplay is failing. On top of that there are a lot of strange goings on he cannot explain. Odd things are happening in the house he's renting via Airbnb. Maybe it's haunted, or just tricks of light are playing with his mind giving him that illusion. Either way, it's a slow descent into darkness that the author of the notebook does not seem to notice himself. Not straight away.
But as the reader I get to see
that every now and then there's things hidden in the text the writer seems not to be aware of. He's spiralling downhill I'm wondering about his mental state, or if the house itself, or something in it -- something supernatural -- is playing with his mind.
How long can he hold it together? He's got responsibilities to look after his kid, but he can hardly look after himself. He's already forgetting which lies he's told and mixing his dreams (and nightmares) with reality. Even he doesn't know how it will end, and starts to think about leaving his notebook behind in order for it to be found... and it has been, I'm reading it now...
Several of the notes in his book get to the end of the page and are never finished, which to my mind, is in keeping with the distracted, confused voice of this note taker and adds to the setting's dark, oppressive atmosphere.
Clever, surreal, with a kind of rhythmic writing, akin to memories of sitting in the back
of the car and being rocked to sleep. The only difference would be the rude awakening. The slamming of the brakes. When the harshness of reality jolts you awake.
Yep, this unsettling, nightmarish journey, had me glued to the pages, even though at first I was not entirely sure I understood what I'd read... It's a short novella sized book, and I must admit I had to read it again to fully appreciate this awesome piece of writing. It's not your average horror, I can tell you! Nope, there's nothing average about this at all. Incidentally, it's translated from German and that fact may be why I thought it worked even better. No words are wasted. There's a certain style to this book that makes me feel like he's got something bigger, and maybe even better to come. I can see, however, it won't be everyone's cup of tea. I personally wish I'd got to this one sooner.
Stark, sparse, and totally different to anything I've read in a long time. I loved it. An alternati
ve read without a doubt. A very short read, in fact. What's more, this review took longer to write about it, than it did to read. Twice. show less
You Should Have Left by author Daniel Kehlmann is imaginatively written in such a way that you're reading a scriptwriter's notes from his notebook, as he is writing them. The main character bares his soul about his life, his thoughts and dreams. Much of it is mundane everyday stuff, until you realise that what is being said actually has a very different meaning. Darker and mo
re horrific than it at first may seem.
Writing his screenplay, and lying to his boss about his progress, the screenwriter takes his family, wife Susanna, and four-year old Esther to what he wants to be a writer's retreat. Yeah, it does sound rather like The Shining. But show more even though there's less of it, there's even more to it... Stick with me. I'll explain.
Things are not going as planned, for this unnamed writer. His marriage is on the rocks and his screenplay is failing. On top of that there are a lot of strange goings on he cannot explain. Odd things are happening in the house he's renting via Airbnb. Maybe it's haunted, or just tricks of light are playing with his mind giving him that illusion. Either way, it's a slow descent into darkness that the author of the notebook does not seem to notice himself. Not straight away.
But as the reader I get to see
that every now and then there's things hidden in the text the writer seems not to be aware of. He's spiralling downhill I'm wondering about his mental state, or if the house itself, or something in it -- something supernatural -- is playing with his mind.
How long can he hold it together? He's got responsibilities to look after his kid, but he can hardly look after himself. He's already forgetting which lies he's told and mixing his dreams (and nightmares) with reality. Even he doesn't know how it will end, and starts to think about leaving his notebook behind in order for it to be found... and it has been, I'm reading it now...
Several of the notes in his book get to the end of the page and are never finished, which to my mind, is in keeping with the distracted, confused voice of this note taker and adds to the setting's dark, oppressive atmosphere.
Clever, surreal, with a kind of rhythmic writing, akin to memories of sitting in the back
of the car and being rocked to sleep. The only difference would be the rude awakening. The slamming of the brakes. When the harshness of reality jolts you awake.
Yep, this unsettling, nightmarish journey, had me glued to the pages, even though at first I was not entirely sure I understood what I'd read... It's a short novella sized book, and I must admit I had to read it again to fully appreciate this awesome piece of writing. It's not your average horror, I can tell you! Nope, there's nothing average about this at all. Incidentally, it's translated from German and that fact may be why I thought it worked even better. No words are wasted. There's a certain style to this book that makes me feel like he's got something bigger, and maybe even better to come. I can see, however, it won't be everyone's cup of tea. I personally wish I'd got to this one sooner.
Stark, sparse, and totally different to anything I've read in a long time. I loved it. An alternati
ve read without a doubt. A very short read, in fact. What's more, this review took longer to write about it, than it did to read. Twice. show less
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Author Information
Daniel Kehlmann was born on January 13, 1975 in Munich. He is a German language author. His work Die Vermessung der Welt (translated into English by Carol Brown Janeway as Measuring the World, 2006) is the best selling novel in the German language since Patrick Süskind's Perfume was released in 1985. In 1997 Kehlmann completed his first novel, show more Beerholms Vorstellung, while still a student. He also wrote numerous reviews and essays while at university. In 2001, Kehlmann held the guest lectureship of poetics at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. In the winter term of 2005/6 Kehlmann held the lectureship of poetics at the FH Wiesbaden, and in 2006/7 he held the lectureship for poetics at the university of Göttingen. Daniel Kehlmann is a member of the Mainzer Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur. In 2015 he made the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize shortlist with his title, F. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- You Should Have Left
- Original title
- Du hättest gehen sollen
- Alternate titles*
- Je had moeten gaan : novelle
- Original publication date
- 2016 (German) (German); 2017-06-15 (English) (English)
- Related movies
- You Should Have Left (2020 | IMDb)
- First words
- Jana and Ella are riding a tandem bike along a country road.
- Quotations
- Ehe. Das Geheimnis ist, dass man sich ja doch liebt. (p. 12)
Meiner Tochter gefiel der Unsinn, und mir gefiel, dass es ihr gefiel, und sie schmiegte sich an mich, und die Nacht schmiegte sich ans Fenster... (p. 19)
Es ist doch so: Man muss völlig phantasielos sein, um sich ohne Furcht in eine brennstoffgefüllte Kaspsel zu setzen. (p. 25)
Im Film ist es witzig, wenn ein Leben zerbricht, weil die Leute dabei schlaue Sätze sagen, aber in Wirklichkeit ist es nur trist und widerlich. (p. 52) - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)And yet I'm only at the very
- Original language
- German
- Disambiguation notice
- This is the book. Do not combine with the movie.
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, Horror, General Fiction
- DDC/MDS
- 833.914 — Literature & rhetoric German & related literatures German fiction 1900- 1900-1990 1945-1990
- LCC
- PT2671 .E32 .D813 — Language and Literature German, Dutch and Scandinavian literatures German literature Individual authors or works 1961-2000
- BISAC
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- 55,508
- Reviews
- 27
- Rating
- (3.40)
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- 9 — Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish
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- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
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- ASINs
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