You Should Have Left
| Author | Daniel Kehlmann |
|---|---|
| Translator | Ross Benjamin |
| Illustrator | |
| Country | Germany |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Riverrun, UK |
Publication date | July 13, 2017 |
| Pages | 113 |
| ISBN | 978-1101871928 Search this book on  . |
You Should Have Left (Original title: Du hättest gehen sollen) is a 2017 novella by German writer Daniel Kehlmann.[1][2] The novel is originally written in German and was translated by Ross Benjamin into English.[3] The novella is the diary of a screenwriter attempting to write a sequel, Besties 2, to follow his earlier success, Besties. He is on a deadline for the production studio and includes events from his daily life in his screenplay.[3][4]
Plot
December 2: The story starts with an unnamed narrator who rents a house through Airbnb for himself, his wife, and his daughter to stay in on vacation. He also spends that time writing the sequel for his screenplay. Susanna disapproves of his screenplay, which starts fights between them on several occasions.
December 3: The narrator begins to experience the abnormalities in the house. He gets himself lost in a different part of the house, thinking it was the bedroom. He blames it on still getting used to the house's layout. The narrator starts to create the main plot for his screenplay.
December 4: The narrator recalls a strange, unbelievable nightmare. It is of a woman with narrow eyes close to the root of her nose with yellow teeth. He was trapped by fear of her and could not move until the woman stepped away from him, allowing him to wake up. The narrator later realizes the woman was from a photo in the laundry room. Needing groceries, the narrator drives to the local town, nearly having an accident at every hairpin turn. In the store, the clerk does not talk to him much and struggles to retrieve every item on the shopping list. Before the narrator leaves, the clerk gives him a transparent plastic triangle ruler. The clerk tells him to try the right angle and offers no further information about its use. The narrator returns to the house and writes a scene in the screenplay that was his interaction with the clerk earlier. He notices halfway through he has no reflection and is even able to see items directly behind him. The phenomenon is dismissed as his imagination. The narrator checks for the photo in the laundry room but does not find one. He doesn't find evidence that a nail had been in the wall either.
December 5: The narrator’s dreams are becoming more realistic, and he is unable to tell whether he is dreaming or awake. He discovers his wife has been cheating on him with a man named David. When he confronts her about the affair, Susanna tells him to think of Esther. The narrator then uses the triangle ruler, discovering when he would draw a right angle it makes a 40x42 angle. Creating a rectangle made a diamond with 49x51 angle equaling 100 degrees. Susanna returns and the narrator fights with her until she leaves with the car. He goes back through his notebook to recollect how much Susanna and David had been talking to each other without him knowing. He instead sees “Get Away” written in his handwriting twice. He suspects his wife wrote it but is unsure how she perfectly fit the words between the words he actually wrote. The narrator hears a high-pitched voice through the baby monitor and checks on his daughter. There is nothing abnormal, and he returns to the kitchen, seeing in the baby monitor himself hovering over his daughter. Esther sits up and screams at the figure of himself. He hears a voice in the baby monitor say, “You should have left. Now it’s too late.” He moves his daughter to the living room couch to protect her. Even with his daughter beside him, the baby monitor still shows her sleeping in the room with someone singing to her. He rechecks the triangle ruler and creates a figure 39x41 degrees.
December 6: The next morning, the narrator wishes to escape by paying for whatever taxi he could buy to leave. He calls the convenience store in town and asks the clerk what happened at the house. He finds out a vacationer had disappeared and was never found again. The building that had been there before the house was a tower built by the devil, and a wizard destroyed it with god’s help. Or that a wizard had built the tower and god destroyed it. He then loses phone service. He tries to leave the locked living room only to have the door lead back to the living room. He writes in his notebook with the hope someone will find it. He then tries walking backwards out of the house, thinking it might help him.
December 7: The narrator tries his idea of walking backwards with Esther and is able to escape. Esther notices a figure standing in a window of the house, and the narrator pretends it is not there. He walks down the road using his phone's flashlight as the only source of light. Esther complains about the cold and clings to her father for safety. At the end of the road they see a light, it belongs to the house. The narrator walks back into the house, telling Esther to fall asleep and he'll explain what happened later. Susanna returns and apologizes for the affair, saying it was a mistake. The narrator tells her to take Esther and get away while she can. He returns to the house alone.
Main characters
- Narrator: He is a father, husband, and writer. His mannerisms are nervous, and he becomes increasingly agitated throughout the story.[2]
- Susanna: She is the wife of the narrator who also has an affair on her husband. She is an actress who is having trouble finding work as she grows older. She doesn’t like her husband’s line of work and is vocal about this. She also experiences minor abnormalities and makes a pact with her husband to leave the house.[1][2][5]
- Esther: She is Susanna's and the Narrator’s daughter. She is four years old in the novel. She is also able to see many of the oddities that the narrator is able to, although she understands them less.[2][5]
Critical reception
The novella has been well received by critics because of the author's ability to blur the lines between reality and imagination. Ulf Zimmerman complimented Kehlmann for demonstrating how to get his readers "to believe pretty much anything" and referenced the novel to have inspiration from Stephen King's The Shining (novel).[6] The Brooklyn Rail called the novel "a masterful experiment about the limits of literary realism" and credited Kehlmann's use of unreliable first-person narration.[5]
Award nominations
- International Dublin Literary Awards 2019[7]
Film adaptation
Main Article: You Should Have Left (film)
The book is being adapted into a movie, with American actor Kevin Bacon starring and David Koepp directing and writing the film, for production company Blumhouse Productions.[8]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Williams, John (3 July 2017). "A Brief but Potent Scare in 'You Should Have Left'". The New York Times. Retrieved 7 June 2018.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Battersby, Eileen (10 July 2017). "You Should Have Left review: welcome to a hall of mirrors". The Irish Times. Retrieved 7 June 2018.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Smallwood, Christine (1 June 2017). "New Books". Harper's. Retrieved 7 June 2018.
- ↑ "NOVELIST KEHLMANN ON NEW NOVELLA, 'YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT'--DEC. 4 AT DEUTSCHES HAUS". States News Service. 15 November 2017. Retrieved 22 April 2019.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Gerard, Diego (2017-09-07). "Daniel Kehlmann's Realism, Horror, Multiverse, and Unreliable Narration: You Should Have Left". The Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved 2019-04-24.
- ↑ Zimmerman, Ulf. "World Literature in Review: Daniel Kehlmann "You Should Have Left"". World Literature Today. Retrieved 22 April 2019.
- ↑ "You Should Have Left | International DUBLIN Literary Award". Retrieved 17 April 2019.
- ↑ McNary, Dave (26 March 2018). "Kevin Bacon to Produce, Star in Horror-Thriller 'You Should Have Left' for Blumhouse". Variety. Retrieved 7 June 2018.
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