About this deal
The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending.
Over the next 24 hours, Leo wanders around the campsite like a sleepwalker, haunted by guilt and fear, and distracted by his desire for a girl named Luce.
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. I’m grateful for the recommendation because otherwise, I might have missed this intense gem of a book. French author Victor Jestin’s short yet forceful debut novel is part dark coming-of-age novel, part morality tale. That was bad enough, but moments later he felt an overwhelming urge to then bury the body on the beach!
She is an art teacher who guides Demon toward self-expression, just as his friend Tommy provokes his dawning understanding of how their world has been shaped by outside forces and what he might be able to do about it. Yet readers also see the yearning for love and wells of compassion hidden beneath his self-protective exterior. On one of his last nights he witnesses a friend he made there's suicide on the children's playground.A short but powerful novella that explores rumination on death and guilt as interrupters of normal quotidian life. I raced through the novella, appreciated the brevity of the writing and the emotions of the character. And then I had a very clear memory of a large hole that some children had dug in the dune that afternoon.