HERE, AND ONLY HERE

Secondary school can be a nightmare, and that’s particularly true of a macabre school governed by peculiar social rules and supernatural machinations in this novel translated from French.

The story follows four students, each feeling like outcasts in their own ways. First-year Iris abandons her childhood friend in his time of need and suffers the consequences. Pierre, the odd one out who’s without a partner to share his desk in a class of 27 students, is violently bullied and ostracized. Madeleine feels insecure and ascribes mystical powers to herself. Guy is paired with a new girl in class and starts to question the tyrannical rule of the prince who dominates his class. Meanwhile, a small cabal of students who call themselves the Top-Secret Club meet to discuss the underlying cause of the school’s peculiarities, which they ascribe to the schmoil, a supernatural substance in the pipes. All of this is a metaphor for the isolating perils of existing as an adolescent within the social trappings of schools that so often operate according to elaborate, cliquish, and downright indecipherable social conventions. This is well-trodden territory, and this iteration feels particularly impenetrable. The prose is clunky, and the circumstances of the characters feel so odd that they nearly obscure the familiar emotions of loneliness, isolation, and insecurity that readers might otherwise find relatable.

A dense fever dream that’s not for the faint of heart.