I thought this would be a chilly psychological murder mystery with a classic French Existentialism™ gloss. Instead I read a haunting character study of a child filled with angst and dread, trying and failing to make sense of the disorienting world around him, never understanding the true nature of his existence in this meaningless, absurd, and often deadly world. Which is basically French Existentialism in a nutshell. Beautifully written, mysterious and moving and humane, and so very sad.

This book was very unsettling. Creepy. Moody. Eerie. Bleak. And amazingly well written. The slow and creeping dread was almost unbearable. To top it all off, at the end you can't quite be sure what horrible thing has occurred, but you think you might know, and the thinking and guessing is worse than if the author had just come right out and written it. Basically, it is the difference between a "Yo,come here so I can stab you" or a wide smiling "Come here, my pretty." I am not usually fond of th

Lately I've been overwhelmed by life and trying to work on my own writing project - and as a result my attention span for reading has take a serious nose-dive. For this easily distracted reader whose head is often brimming with static, "Class Trip" came along at the right time. It's a fully imagined but briskly written story that perfectly evokes the fantasies of childhood while also hinting at awful psychopathic traumas that few of us will ever encounter. At first it seems like this is going to...

Poor little Nicholas...This was an eerie tale about a class of boys going away on a class trip and the whole of the pretty short novel focuses on Nicholas' frame of mind during the experience. It's strange to say with the short length and I have to give my own imagination some credit for this, but there were some very well-done characters and interpersonal relationships partly described in this book that I could run with to create such a rich environment that reminded me a little of LORD OF THE

Emmanuel Carrère’s Class Trip was first published in French 1995 as La Classe de Neige. This new edition issued by Vintage uses the 1997 English translation by Linda Coverdale. Although the novella is narrated in the third person, its viewpoint is that of Nicolas, a young boy in the early years of secondary school, who joins his classmates for a fortnight at a skiing resort. Nicolas is not exactly bullied, but it is clear from the first pages that he is considered as an outsider. We soon sense t...

Why "it was okay": It's probably just a cultural thing, but sometimes I think French novels get all twisted into an emotional knot over very little. Oh, doesn't he have such an awful life?!! Oh, feel pity for him!!! Oh, isn't it dreadful what he's going to find out?!! A lot of teenage dramatic posturing with very little real feeling. Pourquoi c'est seulment ok: J'en ai marre de toutes ces histories trop emotionelles. C'était pas mal écrit mais l'histoire est plutôt de genre telenovella avec cett...

As a silent blanket of snow covers the perimeter of the small French resort, the life of prepubescent Nicolas begins its transformation into something he no longer recognizes as his own.Of course, it all began simply enough. Due to the recent memory of a fatal school bus accident, Nicolas' father insisted upon driving the boy over five hours to his class skiing trip. This way, he said, he could trust the person who was doing the driving. But after delivering Nicolas to his destination, he drove

Difficult to read and empathize with the main character. Maybe I'm just getting old, but stories where the protagonist is an insecure paranoid no longer captivate me. Way too much time was consumed with Nicolas (main character) freaking out about some perceived threat, overwhelming the rest of the plot.Perhaps some meanings are lost in translation, which is why I gave it three stars instead of one.

This novel was a best seller in France when published in 1995. It won France’s Prix Femina, awarded annually since 1904 by an all-female panel of judges. Through the first half of the novel, the author lulls us with humor. The main character is a young boy, 10 or 11 or so, going on a class field trip for a week at a ski resort. He's small, shy, socially awkward, friendless. We sympathize with him, but we smile too, as he worries about bullies, about fitting in, about wetting his bed. He thinks “...

3.5 stars ⭐️

I can always remember watching this movie "La Class de neige"on TV at the same time the Columbine massacre happened inAmerica and being really sickened with a scene in the movie inwhich, in a dream sequence, masked gunmen stormed into achildren's school and started open firing. Definitely a lotmore low key in the book, just one of sad Nicholas' lurid andvivid dreams.Like the proverb "still waters run deep" this generic title givesno inkling of the horrors and anxiety that beset Nicholas as hesta...

This short little story was a good one to read right before Halloween. It was written very well. I loved the nuances that made each character exactly right. Eerily done and I won't spoil the end but I liked it.

Read if you like: Roald Dahl, paranoid thoughts, plastic halloween limb gags, long-winded childhood flashbacks about accidentally scuffing your grade school teacher’s pants causing them to flip out (of course this was set in France).

I was forced to read this book, by my beloved *cough* French teacher, he's an asshole and that's why I give this book such a low rating... You don't enjoy a book when you are forced to read it. I'm sorry Carrère, it's nothing personal.

Actually, I like the book than my expectations. The story expresses about one withdrawn child who is nine years old and grown under the pressure by his family. In the book people can find his inner world. It is quite impressive

3.5 stars.

Picked this one up on a whim at a local used book store a few months back and finally decided to give it a shot. Great short story surrounding the anxious and escapist mind of a young boy, Nicolas, going away to ski camp. For all his elaborate imagined horrors and his imagined (and real) embarrassments of life; real horrors lie just below and come to the surface as he (as I read it) is moving into the awkward early phase of puberty. Definitely a different type of "horror" than normal fare, as we...