Oscar is dead because I watched him die and did nothingAn Evening Standard Best New Book of 2021A short, sharp, shock of a novel beautifully doneDaily MailThe modern day successor to Francoise SaganEvening StandardJestin evokes adolescent turmoil with great delicacy and poignancyTimes Literary SupplementThe Summer PageTurner You Have To Read WaterstonesWinner of the Prix de la vocation 2019Winner of the Prix Femina de lycens 2019Longlisted for the Crime Writers Association Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger 2022Translated by Sam Taylor, translator ofLullabyby Leila Slimani,The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affairby Jol Dicker andHHhH by Laurent BinetLeonard is an outsider, a seventeenyearold uncomfortable in his own skin who is forced to endure a family camping holiday in the South of France. Tired of awkwardly creeping out of beach parties after only a couple of beers, he chooses to spend the final Friday night of the trip in bed. However, when he cannot sleep due to the sound of wild carousing outside his tent, he gets up and goes for a walk.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. Frozen into inaction, he watches Oscar struggle to breathe until finally his body comes loose and falls lifeless to the ground. Unable to think straight, he buries Oscar in the sand and returns to the campsite where, oppressed by the ferocious heat and the weight of what he did and did not do,...

Binding: Hardback;112 pages; Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd; Classification: FA; Weight: 352 g; Dimensions: 143 x 223 x 18

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