You Should Have Left
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."

This passage is from the first entry of a journal kept by the narrator of Daniel Kehlmann's spellbinding new novel. It is 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 mountains of Germany-a house that thwarts the expectations of the narrator's recollection and seems to defy the very laws of physics. He is eager to finish a screenplay*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 within him.
1125580098
You Should Have Left
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."

This passage is from the first entry of a journal kept by the narrator of Daniel Kehlmann's spellbinding new novel. It is 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 mountains of Germany-a house that thwarts the expectations of the narrator's recollection and seems to defy the very laws of physics. He is eager to finish a screenplay*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 within him.
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You Should Have Left

You Should Have Left

by Daniel Kehlmann

Narrated by Robertson Dean

Unabridged — 1 hours, 56 minutes

You Should Have Left

You Should Have Left

by Daniel Kehlmann

Narrated by Robertson Dean

Unabridged — 1 hours, 56 minutes

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Overview

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."

This passage is from the first entry of a journal kept by the narrator of Daniel Kehlmann's spellbinding new novel. It is 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 mountains of Germany-a house that thwarts the expectations of the narrator's recollection and seems to defy the very laws of physics. He is eager to finish a screenplay*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 within him.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Mind-bending. . . . Part horror, part science fiction.” —The New York Times Book Review

“A book that should carry a health warning: read alone at your own risk.” —Monocle
 
“Riveting.” —Entertainment Weekly

“Clever, exquisitely terrifying. . . . [Kehlmann] makes entertainment out of metaphysics.” —Harper’s Magazine
 
“A masterclass in economical storytelling, meticulously attentive prose and imaginative agility. Kehlmann creates narrative complexity with the deftest of strokes.” —The Literary Review

“[A] master novelist. . . . [Kehlmann] has a rare ability to make complex ideas the stuff of warm, light fiction.” —The Times Literary Supplement
 
“A beautifully crafted exercise in terror. . . . [Kehlmann] creates a sense of existential dread that transcends the typical ghost story. . . . A book to keep you up at night.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
 
“[Kehlmann] is in total control. . . . He and his translator Ross Benjamin squeeze an enormous amount of readerly anxiety out of very few carefully placed words. . . . This is a story about a marriage in trouble, and about a seemingly impossible desire to protect a young child from threatening reality, but also about something else, something unavoidable and powerful but terrifyingly vague. . . . This little book . . . has a funny way with dimensions—its effects are amplified, and they linger.” —The Spectator
 
“A masterful experiment about the limits of literary realism.” —The Brooklyn Rail
 
“Wry, eerie and increasingly terrifying. . . . Kehlmann is a formidable observer with a flair for articulating dysfunctional behaviour. . . . An entertaining Everyman’s postmodernist Gothic guaranteed to unsettle.” —The Irish Times
 
“A quick, fun, breathless read. It’s inventive and scary—and a delightful take on the writing life.” —The Huffington Post
 
“Chilling. . . . Kehlmann makes deft use of horror staples and offers commentary on the distinction between art and life.” —Publishers Weekly
 
“A taut and scary novella.” —The Sunday Times (London)

Product Details

BN ID: 2940169064292
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Publication date: 06/13/2017
Edition description: Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

I don’t understand why I had a dream like that after such a blissful evening.
 
An empty room. A naked lightbulb on the ceiling, in the corner a chair with only three legs, one of them broken off. The door was locked; what was I afraid of?
 
The woman. Her narrow eyes were very close together, on either side of the root of her nose, which had a deep wrinkle down the middle. Her forehead too was wrinkled, and her lips were slightly open, so that I could see her teeth, yellowish like those of heavy smokers. But it was her eyes that were awful.
 
She stood there while my fear grew unbearable. I was trembling, I had difficulty breathing, my eyes were watering, my legs went weak—this didn’t actually happen to my real body, of course, so is it possible that I wasn’t afraid at all, that it was only my dream self, just as only my dream hands were trembling? No, the fear was as real as fear can be, and burned in me, and when it was no longer tolerable, the woman took a step back, as if she were releasing me, and only then was I back in our bedroom, where I heard Susanna’s steady breathing and saw the moonlight falling softly through the window, and the baby monitor showed our daughter in a deep sleep.
 
 
Breakfast: Bright grass and even brighter sun, no clouds, the air full of birds whose names I don’t know; I’ve always regretted that I can’t identify birds by name. The way they let the wind carry them, as effortlessly as if flying were the norm, as if it took hard work to stay on the ground.
 
At the moment Susanna is reading to Esther for the thousandth time from the book about the mouse and the cheese moon, the little one is laughing and clapping, and I’m quickly finishing my writing before I head out. We’re running low on provisions, someone has to go down to the village, and I volunteered. Get away. Susanna said thank you and held my hand, and I looked into her eyes. They’re not actually blue, more turquoise, with a sprinkling of black.
 
 
Will you read me your new scenes?
You don’t really want me to.
Don’t be so sensitive, of course I do.
I don’t have much yet.
 
 
It just dawned on me where I know the terrifying woman from. I saw her in the photo on the wall in the laundry room—just to the right of the Miele washing machine and the dryer, I noticed it on the first day. But to get nightmares from that is really too much.

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