It focuses on characters making strange and momentous decisions that the reader would normally have no hope of understanding or empathising with. But it is also a profound meditation on the mystery of evil, our deadly urges, and the savagery that lies deep within each of us. Ik heb werkelijk geen idee waarom dit prijzen won en nog minder waarom de sublieme Uitgeverij Koppernik dit uitgeeft. They’d made the announcement through the loudspeakers attached to the pine trees, one of which was just above my tent.

A committed teacher tries to enlighten Demon’s seventh grade class about how the resource-rich countryside was pillaged and abandoned, but Kingsolver doesn’t air-brush his students’ dismissal of this history or the prejudice encountered by this African American outsider and his White wife. The forced jollity of camp activity, and the enforced conviviality of strangers thrust into strange intimacy during these odd, stifling weeks, leads to a sudden, disruptive encounter. Leo's discomfort and guilt is tangible, and as the reader you are fully immersed into the camp setting, the heat palpable and uncomfortable. Here’s a book that reminds us in no uncertain terms that film noir would not exist without the French. This is the kind of place where there are coordinated group activities and ceaseless top-40 Muzak piped in from dawn past dusk.I have given this book 3 stars as I did enjoy it, I'm just not sure I understood it as it was meant. 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. It's the penultimate day of the holidays and Leonard, who clearly has some kind of social anxiety and possibly some kind of neurodivergence has had an awful time.

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 desirein the tradition of Alice McDermott' s That Night and E.

But I just had higher expectations, wanting to feel the guilt and the sadness more, wanting to know about Oscar more. It’s an excellent book that reminded me strongly of The Beach by Alex Garland, albeit with more literary ambition. Eher ein Außenseitertyp, klappt es nicht so richtig mit den Partys und den Mädchen - doch das ist alles, worum es im Sommerurlaub geht. 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. Victor Jestin succeeds in transporting us with almost nothing, this unique style, this voice—one might almost say these whispers.

The book opens with Leonard witnessing from afar his friend Oskar commit suicide in the middle of the night after a party. This was marketed as an 'exploration into people's darkest impulses' or whatever, which naturally intrigued me, but this was just not. What I didn’t know was that then said observer was going to take it upon himself to dispose of the body . This slim but memorable novel of teenage boredom and discontent is the ideal accompaniment to the hottest days of summer . Kid buries the body, spends an entire day being maudlin (and that’s the most apt word for him) and being creepy with the local girls.But the lineage is there, in the language, in the staccato sentences, and most of all in the fatalism, the sense that we have no control and this is simply the way it had to be. Political corruption, like death and taxes, is always with us, a fact that Chicagoans know better than most.

The novel is set during a heatwave, which serves as a metaphor for the characters' intense emotions. I might have missed something, probably did, but nothing I read subsequently convinced me that he would take that path. Instead of coming to Oscar’s aid, Leonard remains frozen, watching him struggle for air and eventually die.Doch das Leben ist kein Wünsch-dir-was, erst recht nicht für einen Teenager wie Léo, der mit seinen jüngeren Geschwistern und Eltern die Ferien auf einem Mega-Camping im Zelt verbringen muss.