teenagers same all around the world?

Victor Jestin. Heatwave. 2021. Scribner.

La Chaleur. 

Even though I have spent quite a lot of time in France, I have never spent any time in a French camping site.

Now I have read about it, know something about it (and know that I still want to avoid it?)

Leo is 17 and he sees his "friend" get strangled in swing chains. He sees Oscar do this, swinging, swaying, - deliberately, knowingly. Why does he do that? Did he want to harm himself? Enjoy? Pass time? Only just because he is bored / not understood, feeling sorry for himself/not understanding himself - well, no one knows and no one will ever know, since Oscar dies- and for some reason Leo, who definitely doesn't understand himself, he drags Oscas ´s dead body to the beach, digs a hole, buries Oscar there.

Oh well, a lot happens in a camping site, for only 20 euros per night.

Again, French teenagers, the hoods I know, the teenagers I find complicated, frustrating, but understandable (since teenagers are the same everywhere, they have always been the same, always will be the same? - like in In Bloom by Australian Liz Allan). Confused, always, the parenthood by French, again, oh so very French, and as always (fashionably?) a lot of teenage sex, teenagers jerking off and girls being a place, a undermat.

This was fresh, understandable, setting very well presented, good bunch of characters and like Philippe Besson, Jestin, too writes with precise.