Given the weather that much of the United States has been experiencing lately, it’s perfect timing for the English-language release of Victor Jestin’s HEATWAVE, which was originally published in French in 2019. This slim but memorable novel of teenage boredom and discontent is the ideal accompaniment to the hottest days of summer, whether you’re reading it while basking on a beach somewhere or comfortably relaxing in air conditioning.

We meet 17-year-old Leo near the end of a lengthy summer holiday he’s spending with his parents and younger siblings at a well-appointed campground in France. This is the kind of place where there are coordinated group activities and ceaseless top-40 Muzak piped in from dawn past dusk. But most of the teenagers spend all their energy trying to escape from their parents’ attention and hook up with one another.

"This slim but memorable novel of teenage boredom and discontent is the ideal accompaniment to the hottest days of summer, whether you’re reading it while basking on a beach somewhere or comfortably relaxing in air conditioning."

At the end of one of those late-night parties, Leo --- disgusted by the behavior of one of the couples --- escapes and wanders aimlessly for a while, only to find the boy in question, Oscar, dead, asphyxiated by the ropes on a swingset. It’s unclear if the strangulation is purely accidental or the result of some sort of autoerotic asphyxiation. Either way, Leo feels complicit, so he takes it upon himself to bury the body on the beach.

For the next 24 hours, Leo, wracked by guilt and the fear of discovery, bounces from emotion to emotion and from group to group at the resort. He is both intrigued and repulsed by his friend Louis’ obsession with Tinder and his insistence that they all lose their virginity before the end of the summer. He tries to avoid Oscar’s increasingly overwrought mother, who wonders where her son is. And he finds himself almost overwhelmed with fascination for Luce, Oscar’s paramour, who alternates between flirtation and cruelty in her interactions with him. All of this plays out during one of the hottest summers in recent memory.

Sure, not much happens in terms of a traditional plot in HEATWAVE, but Jestin (who himself is in his mid-20s) effectively captures that moment in a young person’s life when they might feel ready to separate from their family of origin but still have not found their identity or claimed their place in the adult world. Drifting from place to place, making missteps, expressing vulnerability, and finally achieving at least one of his goals (only to be supremely underwhelmed by the experience), Leo’s late-summer day --- dead body aside --- perfectly encapsulates what being a teenager feels like sometimes.