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A carregar... The Laws of the Skies (2016)por Grégoire Courtois
Nightmares Not Included (147) A carregar...
Adira ao LibraryThing para descobrir se irá gostar deste livro. Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro. It's a jungle out there, or at least a forest, as a group of children on a school camping trip get lost among the trees with no adult role models to put things in context and no comforting mother figures to allay their fears. Through mishap and malice the frightened kids soon learn the truth behind all those adult adages: no good turn goes unpunished; might makes right; you reap what you sow; and pride goeth before the fall (actual real falls involving cracked skulls and ruptured vertebrae). The author even breaks the fourth wall on occasion just to ensure that we, the readers, are not left entirely unscathed. Grégoire Courtois' cruel and sadistic fable renders the dog-eat-dog world of grown-ups in miniature, upending our fairytale expectations in the process and setting the whole horror show in a sun-dappled woods suddenly grown haunted and carnivorous. Comparable on some level with "Lord of the Flies", yet delivered with enough explicit gut-churning clarity to give even Golding a nightmare or two. Repulsive, outrageous, and sharper than a scalpel. ( ) I won't lie, I was hoping it would be more like "Oh, let's all go on a school camping trip! Hahaha this is so fun! Oh no, there's like, ents and fairies and boogeymen and banshees and giant insects etc., and they're all trying to devour the children!" All the campers would be hiding in cabins, barricading from the supernatural forces, and it would just be a fun, campy, yet graphic story with the simple theme of "don't fuck with the forest (please recycle :P)." I got none of that: the set-up was underdeveloped and edgy, none of the characters felt real, there's philosophical schlock present that tries to heighten the despair but ultimately doesn't fit, the deaths in this story are lackluster, and the only real threats present are a 6-year-old, school-shooter wannabe and natural accidents. There are no fantastical elements, and yet the story can't decide on whether it wants to be gritty realism or absolute camp. There's quite literally nothing to appreciate here that you couldn't find more focused, more creatively expressed, and better realized elsewhere. That even goes for campy stories. Don't bother wasting your time with this. Mentioned in a blog post at https://booksbeyondbinaries.blog/2019/10/28/villainathon-wrap-up/ I was interested in the premise, and I hoped that it could be carried out in a writing style and narrative technique that would make the plotline compelling and horrific. Instead, this book is gruesome from the first page. I wouldn't be able to recommend this title.
From the first, Courtois creates no illusion to mask the fates of the first-grade class heading into the woods, or of their teacher and two parents: no one survives this camping trip. The French know how to push horror’s boundaries, and Courtois is no exception. In this sliver of a novel, he gradually picks off his cast, mounting tension by juxtaposing horrific action with the children’s innocence and an innocuous setting.... Courtois’ expertly orchestrated decimation melds into a brutal whole that leaves the reader shaken, though its final images will prove unshakable. Courtois's first novel to be translated into English, a haunting avant-garde thriller, begins like a fairy tale but winds up more like a Friday the 13th movie Twelve six-year-old schoolchildren leave their parents for a weekend at camp with their teacher Frederic and two chaperones; readers know from the first page that none of them will return....Unflinching in its savagery, the nightmarish poetry of this modern Lord of the Flies is undeniable. Courtois writes that “a story without a point destroys civilization a little,” and far from being an exercise in idle cruelty, this wicked novel plumbs the darkest reaches of childhood fears and finds plenty to be afraid of.
"Once upon a time, a class of six-year-olds heads into the forest for a camping trip. The innocent children play games where they imagine monsters everywhere: the creaking of trees becomes a growl, a tree trunk becomes an ogre. But this fairy tale doesn't have a happy ending. Monsters really do exist: accidents, illness, the murderous impulses of a classmate. One by one, 'happily ever after' evaporates for the children and their chaperones, as, one by one, like all nature's creatures, they must learn the laws of the skies."--Provided by publisher. Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
LibraryThing Early Reviewers AlumGrégoire Courtois's book The Laws of the Skies was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Current DiscussionsNenhum(a)Capas populares
Google Books — A carregar... GénerosSistema Decimal de Melvil (DDC)843.92Literature French French fiction Modern Period 21st CenturyClassificação da Biblioteca do Congresso dos EUA (LCC)AvaliaçãoMédia:
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