Rating - ⭐⭐
"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 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."
You Should Have Left is a standalone horror novella by Daniel Kehlmann.
This is giving me...nothing. Nothing but pure confusion at least. This is very short book, and my review will be equally short as well, but I expected at least something from this. It was really hard to get through this book despite its length. The writing was extremely off-putting and hard to digest, to the point that I had no idea what the story was supposed to be about.