The New York Times - John Williams
The new book by the German-Austrian author Daniel Kehlmann, You Should Have Left, is a minor trick for him, but a neat one. This mind-bending novella about a writer losing his marbles contains images that startle and linger…With a premise not exactly built for laughs, Kehlmann still manages a few darkly comic flourishes, especially when it comes to family life. The book can seem like a pamphlet warning against domesticity…If the setup is shopworn—redolent of the category's king, The Shining, and any number of lesser fright pieces—by the end Kehlmann takes it to provocative and open-ended places.
Publishers Weekly
04/17/2017
A family vacation in the mountains goes terrifyingly off-script in Kehlmann’s brief and chilling novel. The narrator, a screenwriter working on a sequel to his last successful film, begins a notebook to record the highlights of the trip. At first, this record shows the conventional frustrations of marriage: the screenwriter feels distant from his wife, an actress named Susanna, and is bored by caring for their four-year-old daughter, Esther. As the rift between spouses widens, however, he begins to notice and describe inexplicable and increasingly frightening phenomena. His reflection goes missing from the windows of the rented house; photographs appear and disappear from the walls; disturbing dreams of “an empty room, a naked light bulb on the ceiling,” and a woman with “awful eyes” haunts his sleep. Then a stranger encountered in the nearest village advises him to “quickly get away,” and the same message also begins to appear in the notebook, in his own handwriting—but it may already be too late to escape the house’s influence. Kehlmann (Measuring the World) makes deft use of horror staples and offers commentary on the distinction between art and life: “in a movie it’s funny when a life falls apart, because the people say clever things while it’s happening, but in reality it’s only dismal and repugnant.” But the plot of this spare and occasionally thrilling novel is ultimately indistinguishable from a by-the-numbers horror flick. (June)
From the Publisher
This mind-bending novella about a writer losing his marbles contains images that startle and linger....The most arresting of the book’s chilling moments might do for baby monitors what ‘Jaws’ did for swimming in the ocean....[Kehlmann] manages a few darkly comic flourishes...provocative...potent...pleasantly unsettling.”
—John Williams, The New York Times
“A quick, fun breathless read. It’s inventive and scary—and a delightful take on the writing life.”
—Huffington Post
“A beautifully crafted exercise in terror from one of Germany’s most celebrated contemporary authors….This novel is, in many ways, a classic haunted-house tale. There are warnings about the house from the people in the village below. There’s a creeping sense of horror. There are frightening phenomena that the narrator cannot explain. And there are specters. Kehlmann uses all these familiar tropes beautifully. But he also creates a sense of existential dread that transcends the typical ghost story….A book to keep you up at night.”
—Kirkus Reviews, *starred review*
“A well-crafted tale about one man unravelling due to forces beyond his control….You Should Have Left—part-horror, part-psychodrama—serves up effective shocks and thrills that keep us rapt and on the edge of our seats. The narrator’s journal slides from excerpts from his screenplay to accounts of his own creeped-out tragedy, and slips from coherence to jumbled trains of thought, and each time we lose purchase yet delight in the confusion and the tension.”
—Malcolm Forbes, The National
“My favorite German novelist.″
—Ian McEwan, The Sunday Times (London)
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2017-04-17
A beautifully crafted exercise in terror from one of Germany's most celebrated contemporary authors.The unnamed narrator of this novella is a screenwriter trying to complete a sequel to his hit, Besties. In order to help him work, he and his wife retreat to a rental house in the mountains, taking their 4-year-old daughter with them. This is, of course, hardly a distraction-free environment. The notebook that is supposed to be devoted to his script is filled with more personal matter—good-natured grumbling about raising a small child, descriptions of the tensions within his marriage, and complaints about the difficulties he's having figuring out what happens next for his characters. The parenting vignettes are funny: "Meanwhile Esther was telling us about a friend from preschool who is named either Lisi or Ilse or Else and either took a toy away from her or gave her one...; little kids are not good storytellers." The conflicts between the narrator and his wife, Susanna, are less innocent, and they threaten to darken what should be an innocuous chick flick. Then the bad dreams begin, and it's not long before the line between these night terrors and everyday reality begins to blur. This novel is, in many ways, a classic haunted-house tale. There are warnings about the house from the people in the village below. There's a creeping sense of horror. There are frightening phenomena that the narrator cannot explain. And there are specters. Kehlmann (F, 2014, etc.) uses all these familiar tropes beautifully. But he also creates a sense of existential dread that transcends the typical ghost story. The relationship between the narrator and his daughter adds a level of anxiety; he has to protect her not just from the house, but also from knowledge of what's happening. And Kehlmann deserves special notice for recognizing just how uncanny a baby monitor can be. A book to keep you up at night.
