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You Should Have Left

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About this listen

A thrilling exploration of psychological disturbance and fear from the best-selling and prize-winning author of Measuring the World.

On retreat in the wintry Alps with his family, a writer is optimistic about completing the sequel to his breakthrough film. Nothing to disturb him except the wind whispering around their glassy house. The perfect place to focus.

Intruding on that peace of mind, the demands of his four-year-old daughter splinter open long-simmering arguments with his wife. 'I love her,' he writes in the notebook intended for his script. 'Why do we fight all the time?' Guilt and expectation strain at his concentration and strain, too, at the walls of the house. They warp under his watch; at night, looking through the window, he sees impossible reflections on the snow outside.

Then words start to appear in his notebook - words he didn't write.

Familiar and forbidding by turns, this is an electrifying experiment in form by one of Europe's boldest writers. The ordinary struggles of a marriage transform, in Kehlmann's hands, into a twisted fable that stays darkly in the mind.

©2017 Daniel Kehlmann (P)2017 WF Howes Ltd Genre Fiction Horror Psychological Thriller & Suspense Scary Marriage Exciting Fiction Suspense
All stars
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Mercifully brief. Prettily written. Well read. Vacuous (like The Director). Some may think it pretentious. Others may suspect that the author has been reading the short stories of Ballard. Shorter still would be good.

Yawn

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I thought this novella was going to be a clichéd ghost story as it developed, but it turned into something much more complex and clever, and far more frightening. This book jumps so many places so quickly. It’s a fast read for two reasons; 1, simply because it’s short, 2, because once you get into it you cannot stop reading/listening. It created such a pit in my stomach.

It's also a great satire of the creative life seen from the point of view of a screenwriter and his not-so-sympathetic wife, as well as a satire of us writers who feel we have to record our every deathless obvservation. It's creepy and funny and twisty and just long enough to make your skin crawl. I enjoyed it.

Quick read that will get your skin to crawl

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Run of the mill haunted house story with an especially tedious protagonist. Narrator was OK though.

nothing special

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Story has been done a million times, very repetitive and definitely not scary. Hate when I fall for the hype.

Wish I didn’t fall for the instagram hype

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