French writer Victor Jestin’s debut novella, Heatwave, was published to much acclaim when he was just twenty six. Translated by Sam Taylor, this is the story of an introverted and angsty 17-year-old called Leo who is on the last day of a camping holiday with his parents and younger siblings. The opening of the novel is definitely punchy.

Oscar is dead because I watched him die and did nothing. He was strangled by the ropes of a swing, like one of those children you read about in the newspapers. But Oscar was not a child. At seventeen, you don’t die like that by accident. You tie the rope around your neck because you want to feel something. Maybe he was trying to find a new form of pleasure. After all, that was what we were here for: the pleasure. Anyway, I did nothing. Everything stemmed from that.

Heatwave captures the last 36 hours or so of Leo’s holiday at “the Landes, in the southwest corner of France. Three stars. Surrounded by pine forest. Close to the ocean. Swimming pool with slide. Children’s playground. Karaoke, gym, special events every night.” For the other teenagers on site, it’s endless partying and hookups, but Leo is quiet and awkward. The only friend Leo has made in his two weeks at the campsite is Louis, who “didn’t have any other friends, so he put up with [Leo].”

After the novel’s inciting incident, and the decision Leo makes afterwards, the novel just follows Leo around “annoyed with everyone on the beach–for failing to hear [his] silent screams, for failing to guess.” He considers telling various people about what he knows, his parents, Oscar’s mother, Luce, the girl he wants to hook up with, but he is never quite able to say the words.

I think Jestin’s novel is trying to capture the claustrophobic, confusing business of being a teenager on the cusp pf adulthood. Pettiness, a failure to communicate, poor decision making, and a longing to shed our own skins, to be someone cooler and more in control are feelings everyone can relate to (or remember). I think this book would likely be more meaningful to a younger reader, but it was easy to turn the pages and even though I didn’t really understand Leo’s brain and felt sort of disconnected from the story, it was an interesting and disconcerting read.