School's Out [Mass Market Paperback]

Christophe Dufosse (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 29, 2007

A vertiginous black comedy by one of France's most exciting new novelists

Winner of France's most prestigious prize for a first novel, School's Out is a gripping re- imagining of Lord of the Flies¸ at once scarier and funnier than its prototype. When high school teacher Éric Capadis is found dead, an apparent suicide, his friend Pierre Hoffman takes over his class. The students in 9F are well behaved yet oddly menacing-Hoffman's colleagues warn him to watch out for them. But it's only when he agrees to accompany his charges on a school trip to the Normandy coast that he begins to understand the reason for their bizarre solidarity. School's Out is a triumph of nihilism and surreal wit.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Awarded the Prix Premier Roman in France, Dufossé's compelling debut portrays the uneasy divide between adult and adolescent with superb skill. In 1995, 32-year-old Pierre Hoffman, who teaches French in the quiet town of Clerval far from sophisticated Paris, takes on the history/geography class for his colleague, 25-year-old Éric Capadis, after Capadis jumps to his death while "the children of 9F" watch enigmatically. Was it suicide or murder? After Capadis's funeral, one of his students warns Hoffman not to take on the class again after the holidays: "They'll destroy you." Hoffman spies on the students' secret meetings and learns mysterious deaths have shadowed the entire class since they started school. In the end, Hoffman accompanies these strange young teens on a class trip with haunting consequences. Dufossé, himself a former teacher, sustains a terrifying feeling of dread throughout this grim thriller.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

In this stylish update of William Golding's Lord of the Flies, debut novelist Dufosse substitutes French middle-school classroom 9F for the isolated island setting of Golding's classic work. Substitute teacher Pierre Hoffman must take over the classroom of a teacher who has committed suicide. The students are so eerily well behaved that Hoffman's initial impression is that "they were neither a class, nor a group, but a gang." Then a student who tries to warn Hoffman to turn down the assignment shows up in class bearing facial scars from a knife assault, and Hoffman begins receiving disturbing phone calls. Initial inquiries reveal that the students have been in the same class together since kindergarten, and other teachers at the school are afraid of them. As Dufosse expertly builds up a menacing atmosphere, he also reveals that the teachers' behavior is nearly as questionable as their students'. More an existential horror story than a straight thriller, with lots of strange conversations and black humor thrown in for effect, this unusual novel also recalls the work of Michel Houellebecq. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics); Tra edition (May 29, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0143038117
• ISBN-13: 978-0143038115
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 5.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,872,735 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Philosophic thriller, July 4, 2007

By 

M. J. Smith (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: School's Out (Mass Market Paperback)

The cover blurbs lead one to expect a thriller of some sort - think Class Trip. If this is your expectation expect to be disappointed. One can be a third of the way through the book and still have little tension causing you to read until 3 a.m. - my test for a good thriller or mystery. And unlike The Class Trip, School's Out will not lead you towards understanding of an individual's aberrant behavior. Rather the strength of School's Out is philosophical and group oriented. Through the rather detailed exploration of the personalities of individuals who must deal with middle school class, the book explore how individuals and groups cope with "reality" - especially the adult coping through becoming an observer, the middle school class coping through uniform compliance. Suicide, physical assault, and other "thriller" plot elements counterbalance the philosophic bent to create a very enjoyable read.

On the down side, the translation is at times awkward. I would like to explain the difficulties away by claiming British usage but phrase such as "two crew" rather than "two crew members" disrupt one's reading more than simple British-isms. The book could be improved by a bit of editing - in the early part of the book the scene setting is overly long for its narrative function. But Dufosse is definitely an author worth watching - entertaining and thought-provoking.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A truly creepy thriller!, June 14, 2007

By 

Mystery Lover (Denver, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: School's Out (Mass Market Paperback)

School's Out is a really intelligent, dark, and weirdly funny thriller. The students in Pierre Hoffman's classroom are out to get him, but he's not sure why, and the disturbing messages he keeps receiving aren't helping. I couldn't put this book down! Definitely for fans of Donna Tartt's The Secret History.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars drudgery, July 18, 2007

By 

Doralyn Rush "bibliophile" (Cuba, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: School's Out (Mass Market Paperback)

I want to say that I only managed to get to page 78 in this book and even that was difficult. The write-ups on this book make it sound like it's about students when they didn't even enter the picture until page 54 and only in a perfunctory interaction (and that was the only interaction through page 78). What this book really seems to be about is a boring, solitary bachelor who dwells far too much on his own thoughts (annoying attempts at deep thinking and quasi-intellectualism that end up being nothing but annoying). I could not force myself to finish this book. I figure if it had anything to say, it should have started saying it before a quarter through the book. This was just tedious. I read hordes of books, particularly for young adults (as an English teacher) and I would never recommend this.