HEATWAVE

Here’s a book that reminds us in no uncertain terms that film noir would not exist without the French.

This may sound strange in relation to a story whose foul deed takes place at the beach and is committed by a teenager. 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. The teenager is Leo, vacationing with his family and friends at a popular campsite in the southwest corner of France. The very first sentences spell out the reason for Leo’s feeling of doom: “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 newspapers.” Leo didn’t kill Oscar, but he didn’t help him, either, and he didn’t hesitate to bury him on the beach. They liked the same girl, and, well, stuff happens. The short novel unfolds like an adolescent version of Camus’ The Stranger, as Leo spends pages considering the senselessness of what happened and feeling the weight of life’s ennui. The author is 26 and not too far removed from his antihero’s demographic and concerns, the everyday life here interrupted by death and guilt. At its best the book cranks out short, terse sentences like machine gun fire: “All was calm on this side of the dune. The tents and the bungalows were lost in the shadows. The only light came from the condom vending machine. ‘Protect yourself,’ it said.” At its worst, it gets two-dimensional and repetitive, descriptive on the surface but limited in scope. At the least, it’s a calling card for what should be a bright career.

The fates are up to no good in this ennui-filled story of passive crime and guilt.