Heatwave

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I nearly wished there was more but ultimately I think keeping it short is what makes it so poignant and powerful. I found it to be well written and it kept my interest, but it seemed to leave a wealth of unanswered questions. It tells the story of Leonard, an awkward 17 year old boy enduring a family camping holiday in France and struggling to fit in with his peers. I’m grateful for the recommendation because otherwise, I might have missed this intense gem of a book.

Jestin is extremely good on precisely those sensations so indelibly associated with fraught teen summers, be it Leonard’s obscure feelings of separation from his perfectly pleasant family, the forced bonhomie of those running the campsite or the blistering heat that seeps like an illness under the skin . However, when he cannot sleep due to the sound of wild carousing outside his tent, he gets up and goes for a walk. Oscar sembra averci ripensato, forse vorrebbe liberarsi dalle corde, ma Léonard non lo aiuta, lo lascia morire. Een portret dat ook ergens laat begrijpen waarom hij die vreemde beslissingen neemt wanneer hij ziet hoe één van de andere campingjongeren zelfmoord pleegt. Questa parte della Francia, il sudovest, è invasa da un’ondata di caldo inarrestabile, nel paese ci sono già state decine di morti.They’d made the announcement through the loudspeakers attached to the pine trees, one of which was just above my tent. I have given this book 3 stars as I did enjoy it, I'm just not sure I understood it as it was meant. All this while the parents have their own fun at the other end of the beach where a bunny-costumed host is prancing around, shouting Olé! Interesting novella and premise about a 17 year old French boy spending two weeks with his family at a campground but the sea.

It's hot, he's surrounded by highly unlikable horny teenagers and we spend a torturous couple of days with him as events play out. The book then follows Leonard over the weekend, trying to act normal, whilst coming to terms with what he has done. Originally published by Flammarion under the title La Chaleur, it won the Prix Femina des Lycéens and was nominated for the Prix Medicis and Prix Renaudot. The descriptions of the French campsite setting were fab, I could really picture the scenes perfectly.I have no recollection of how this book came to be on my TBR (shocking, I know), but I do know that I was drawn to the cover, love a good coming of age story and actually read the blurb here that Heatwave was going to be about a 17-year old who while on vacation with his family witnesses another teenager hanging by his neck from the playground swingset and does nothing to intervene. I could almost feel the intense heat, and thus I could empathize with the protagonist's apathy caused by the heat. Drifting from place to place, making missteps, expressing vulnerability, and finally achieving at least one of his goals (only to be supremely underwhelmed by the experience), Leo’s late-summer day --- dead body aside --- perfectly encapsulates what being a teenager feels like sometimes. Here’s a book that reminds us in no uncertain terms that film noir would not exist without the French. What it lacks in size, it makes up for with an intense atmosphere, intriguing and interesting characters, and a disturbing plot.

For more French crime fiction see Jérôme Leroy’s Little Rebel or Summer of Reckoning by Marion Brunet.A vivid, mesmerizing novel about a teenage boy on 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. Awkward and ill at ease, he is an outsider who creeps away from parties unnoticed after a couple of drinks. A couple working as chauffeurs have been accused of stealing millions from the founder of Tin House Books. It's all about the complexity of human nature and the atmosphere that is determined by the different associations with heat.