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[[Category:General Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->
{{newreview
|author=Daniel Kehlmann and Ross Benjamin (translator)
|title=You Should Have Left
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Our narrator is a screenwriter, tasked with coming up with a sequel to his hit movie ''Besties'' – a film which helped pay for a house, but which his actress wife keeps letting him know, isn't ''art''. To concentrate, the family – he, the wife, and their four year old daughter – have rented a large, modern house at the end of a horrid, hairpin bend-filled road, in a charming alpine landscape. But things aren't right. The couple are at loggerheads too much, things keep unsettling our narrator, and the sole shopkeeper for miles around is ready with the Hammer Horror styled warnings of strange events. Quickly we see the book's title in all its galling clarity – but it isn't too late to get out… is it? And out of what, exactly?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786484048</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Amanda Craig
|summary= The uniqueness of a boyhood spent growing up in Jersey is conveyed in some memorable imagery in this novel, intersecting the German wartime occupation of the island, the Afghan resistance to the Russians in the 1980s and present day conflict in Syria. Ben, now working internationally for a human rights advocacy organisation, flits back and forth between reflections on his boyhood and his adult self. He is both attempting to solve the mystery of what became of his uncle Jack, who had a brief but lasting impact on him as a child, and trying to decide how to save his disintegrating marriage. For the first few chapters I enjoyed these time shifts back and forth, advancing with Ben in understanding the meaning of events which as an eight year old he could only partly grasp. Ben also develops a deepening appreciation of the choices he has made in life, such as his choice of career, by examining the influences on his childhood self.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780722028</amazonuk>
}}
