In the opening pages Leo discovers that his similarly-aged acquaintance Oscar has died (whether it was suicide or merely just accidental is not really established) on the playground late at night.

You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Eerie, propulsive, sexy, and unsettling, Victor Jestin’s Heatwave carries the coming-of-age novel into darkly surprising new territory. Poi, ci si inoltra nel marasma dei suoi diciassette anni, nella sua spasmodica incertezza, nel suo ossessivo senso di inadeguatezza, nelle sue fantasie erotiche, in Luce, che ha un anno di più, in Louis, che ha la stessa età di Léonard e vuole essergli amico a ogni costo, Louis usa Tinder per rimorchiare le ragazze, ma forse non sono davvero loro che lo attirano di più.It’s a sweltering August on a French beach campsite and teenage boy Leonard is there with his family for a summer holiday. he story begins with Leo witnessing another boy strangle himself in an empty playground and ends with him wandering around a campsite, haunted by guilt and fear, and distracted by his desire for a girl named Luce. A mesmerizing, "fiery page-turner" ( Entertainment Weekly) about a teenage boy on summer vacation who makes an irrevocable mistake and becomes trapped in a spiral of guilt and desire--in the tradition of Alice McDermott' s That Night and E. Leo's interior life is disturbing; the questions his actions raise and don't raise might nudge our own interest in relationships and how we view connections. At its worst, it gets two-dimensional and repetitive, descriptive on the surface but limited in scope.

I wonder if this novel is intended as a modern retelling of Camus’ The Outsider, because Leonard is certainly that - an awkward loner who doesn’t fit into society or really understand how to or want to fit in - and the story centres around a singular death (there are also more superficial similarities like the beach setting, the length of the novel and both authors’ French nationalities). The narrator is a 17 year old boy on vacation, feeling completely isolated while surrounded by the revelry of others. It also comments on societal pressure to conform and, on the other side of the spectrum, questions the artificial nature of people’s behaviour, their superficiality and their ability to ignore the issues they don’t want to deal with.As Leo's tension ratchets up, he pursues the object of his affection, Luce, in turn luring her, at times affecting disinterest, at all times, remembering Oscar's buried body. Victor Jestin’s debut novel Heatwave has an intriguing premise that unfortunately turns out to be only that as what follows isn’t particularly interesting or memorable. If so, could Leo be an unreliable narrator and, like in Camus’ novel, the death that occurs is a murder - did Leo actually murder Oscar, because he was jealous of his being with Luce, the girl he fancies, and Leo distanced himself from the crime like he distances himself from everything else in his life, pretending the swings killed him instead? Der Autor hat wohl diese Jahre selbst noch sehr gut im Gedächtnis, da es ihm wirklich gut gelungen ist, diesen Charakter zu zeichnen.

And he finds himself almost overwhelmed with fascination for Luce, Oscar’s paramour, who alternates between flirtation and cruelty in her interactions with him. 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. We meet him around 24 hours before their departure, as Léo, by coincidence, witnesses the suicide of his friend Oscar. Ma su Leonard sembra incombere qualcosa di più ampio, di più spaventoso e opprimente come il caldo di quello scorcio di estate.Der eigentliche Clou ist ohnehin das Hintergrundrauschen in den Ohren: Léo hat eine Schuld auf sich geladen, oder zumindest eine Dummheit gemacht. You devour this book, but its effects linger, so strongly does it reverberate with destinies sacrificed to the yawn of the void. For lack of a more polished description, author Jestin's novella Heatwave (translated from its original French text by Sam Taylor) seemed to be a European-flavored collision of J. Uncomfortable in his own skin and struggling to find his footing in the world, Leonard is clearly a fish out of water in a holiday resort where social constructs are enforced with partying, drinking and organised activities.

French author Victor Jestin’s short yet forceful debut novel is part dark coming-of-age novel, part morality tale. Awkward and ill at ease, he is an outsider who creeps away from parties unnoticed after a couple of drinks.If you like Slimani, I think you’ll enjoy this, and at just over 100 pages, chances are you’ll inhale it like I did. 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. Heatwave" by Victor Justin is a novel that explores the themes of guilt, fear, and desire through the eyes of its teenage protagonist, Leo. Instead of coming to Oscar’s aid, Leonard remains frozen, watching him struggle for air and eventually die.