Heatwave

Product Information

It would explain the bizarre choice of not alerting anyone to Oscar’s accidental death and implicating himself unnecessarily. This slim but memorable novel of teenage boredom and discontent is the ideal accompaniment to the hottest days of summer, whether you’re reading it while basking on a beach somewhere or comfortably relaxing in air conditioning . The teenager is Leo, vacationing with his family and friends at a popular campsite in the southwest corner of France. I found it to be well written and it kept my interest, but it seemed to leave a wealth of unanswered questions. In the whole book Leo thinks of Oscar, he feels guilty, is nervous, wants to tell someone but he also pushes those thoughts away and tries to live his normal camping life.

A prizewinning sensation in France and now stunningly translated by Sam Taylor, Heatwave is Victor Jestin's ';charged and chilling' ( Publishers Weekly) debut novela searing portrait of adolescent desire and recklessness, and secrets too big to keep.Filled with adolescent hormones and days filled with lust, will he be found out, suspected or confess? She is an art teacher who guides Demon toward self-expression, just as his friend Tommy provokes his dawning understanding of how their world has been shaped by outside forces and what he might be able to do about it.

It started out as one kid grappling with the burden of watching another kid die - then did a major detour for most of the other 100 pages whilst Leonard and every other kid had nothing but sex in their heads - and then I was supposed to care again right at the end when the author decided he had to tie up the narrative for the dead kid. The embarrassment of adolescence was captured perfectly, while the image of the intense sun burning down on the players of this story definitely heightened the tension and discomfort. The majority of the book deals with the interior monologue of Leonard after the event and the disparity between what he thinks is happening and what is actually happening.The book opens with Leonard witnessing from afar his friend Oskar commit suicide in the middle of the night after a party. Dolende tiener, een campingvakantie, een hitte die maar niet lijkt af te nemen, een lijk op het strand. There is an interesting scene towards the end, that seemingly comes out of nowhere, when a male friend makes an intimate, if not sexual connection, with the narrator. On the final Friday of the trip, unable to sleep, Leonard goes for a walk and sees one of the boys from the campsite, Oscar, hanging from the rope of a playground swing.

This is a disturbing novella along the lines of a modern day The Stranger by Albert Camus or Catcher in the Rye by Salinger.It was still intriguing to be in the mind of Leo an awkward teenager, grappling with something dark. He had done that on his own and, to judge from the expression on his face, he might have changed his mind. What I didn’t know was that then said observer was going to take it upon himself to dispose of the body . As he wanders among the dunes, he sees Oscar, one of the cooler kids, drunk in a playground, hanging by his neck from the ropes of a swing.

Heatwave won the Prix de la vocation 2019 and the Prix Femina de Lycéens 2019 and it’s an intense, short, dark, suspenseful thriller set over the course of a weekend. Then, when he is sure Oscar is dead, instead of running for help, running to report what has happened, even if that meant pretending that he arrived too late.

Ma, come dicevo, la sensazione che Léonard agisca per inedia esistenziale dura poco, le prime brevi pagine. Leo's discomfort and guilt is tangible, and as the reader you are fully immersed into the camp setting, the heat palpable and uncomfortable.