class trip emmanuel carrere review

Class Trip by Emmanuel Carrère

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B+ : excellent presentation of a child's perspective, effectively unsettling story

See our review for fuller assessment.

   Review Consensus :   Well-told but what's the point ?    From the Reviews : "The most unsettling aspect of Nicolas's violently surreal stories is his own passive relation to them. (...) The revealed secret of Class Trip raises even darker questions than it answers, and like much of Carr�re's writing to date seems written around those elements of consciousness that remain unquantified and inexplicable, though they certainly exist and may only be accessible by inference." - Gary Indiana, Bookforum "Carrère hat sich viel vorgenommen. Er will nicht nur eine Kinderseele studieren, in der die Angst (des Vaters vor sich selbst) fieberhaft Wurzeln treibt, sondern darüber hinaus eine Kriminalgeschichte erzählen, die diese grausam übertrifft (.....) Den Sog des Unheimlichen hat Carrère besser im Griff als den poetischen Feinbereich." - Ina Hartwig, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung " Class Trip , a novella by French author Emmanuel Carrere, is a manipulation that is unusually distasteful because of its subject: the destruction, psychological and otherwise, of a little boy. (...) The author has written with such acute intuition of how a child can suffer that it is only gradually that we realize that he is writing without affect. Nicolas' story is a setup." - Richard Eder, The Los Angeles Times "Mr. Carrere's novel is suffused with an atmosphere of menace that has less to do with what actually takes place than with what the reader fears is about to take place. (...) Ellipses abound in Mr. Carrere's novel; wisely, he has chosen to reveal too little rather than too much. But in doing so he cheats a bit, asking us to fill in too many of the blanks and to suspend our disbelief when the logic doesn't quite work. Still, the aftereffects of Class Trip are potent" - Mary Hawthorne, The New York Times Book Review "(A) meticulously nuanced stunt. At the end of it, I had the same feeling I had at the conclusion of the Dutch film The Vanishing . There was no denying the talent involved, but what was the point ? (...) I don't know that I've ever encountered such a complete understanding of the morbid, self-pitying fantasies outcast children are prone to." - Charles Taylor, Salon Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review 's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

The complete review 's Review :

     "Me," said Hodkann calmly, "if I were your father, I'd use you for demonstrations. I'd cut off your arms and legs, I'd fit on the artificial ones, and I'd show you to my clients like that. It'd make a great advertisement."

     Hodkann's interest in his father bothered Nicolas. He even wondered if the other boy hadn't taken him under his wing to get close to his father, to win his confidence.

     For a long time afterward -- even now -- Nicolas tried to remember the last words his father spoke to him.

        Note: The French version of this novel has 31 chapters, the English translation only 30. What gives ? Yes, they simply cut one of the chapters -- fundamentally changing the book.        In the chapter in question, which comes towards but not right at the end of the novel, Nicolas encounters Hodkann in Paris' Trocadéro, twenty years after the fact. The brief encounter shines considerable light on the story and changes the fundamental feel of it, in particular because it shows that Nicolas has endured (which one might well not have expected him to, given how the novel ends) -- and that it is Hodkann who has, essentially, not made it.        By omitting the chapter, the American publisher has altered the story; arguably it is 'tighter' and more self-contained without this glimpse of the future -- but Carrère clearly felt a need for some distance in the novel, to blunt the immediacy of the story; this is apparent in some of what is left over in the English (which hints, from the first line on, that the account is a retrospective one from a considerable distance), but only relatively confusingly so. The missing chapter also shifts more of the reader's attention onto the figure of Hodkann, whereas without it Nicolas seems even more the focus        Perhaps the author condoned such fiddling with his book -- but surely the least the American publishers could have done was own up to it, and note somewhere, at least in small print, that they'd messed with the text.

- M.A.Orthofer , 1 July 2010

About the Author :

       French author Emmanuel Carrère was born in 1957. He has written numerous books, which have been widely translated.

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Monday 6 April 2020

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Emmanuel Carrere. Metropolitan Books, $19.95 (224pp) ISBN 978-0-8050-4694-6

Reviewed on: 03/29/1999

Genre: Fiction

Paperback - 176 pages - 978-0-7043-8059-2

Paperback - 176 pages - 978-1-78487-615-9

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by Carola Lovering ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 12, 2018

There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.

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Long Island native Lucy Albright, starts her freshman year at Baird College in Southern California, intending to study English and journalism and become a travel writer. Stephen DeMarco, an upperclassman, is a political science major who plans to become a lawyer. Soon after they meet, Lucy tells Stephen an intensely personal story about the Unforgivable Thing, a betrayal that turned Lucy against her mother. Stephen pretends to listen to Lucy's painful disclosure, but all his thoughts are about her exposed black bra strap and her nipples pressing against her thin cotton T-shirt. It doesn't take Lucy long to realize Stephen's a "manipulative jerk" and she is "beyond pathetic" in her desire for him, but their lives are now intertwined. Their story takes seven years to unfold, but it's a fast-paced ride through hookups, breakups, and infidelities fueled by alcohol and cocaine and with oodles of sizzling sexual tension. "Lucy was an itch, a song stuck in your head or a movie you need to rewatch or a food you suddenly crave," Stephen says in one of his point-of-view chapters, which alternate with Lucy's. The ending is perfect, as Lucy figures out the dark secret Stephen has kept hidden and learns the difference between lustful addiction and mature love.

Pub Date: June 12, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-5011-6964-9

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Atria

Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018

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9781784876159

Vintage Editions

Emmanuel Carrère

Random House

06 August 2020

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FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE ADVERSARY Little Nicolas is a delicate, timid schoolboy, with an excitable, if morbid imagination – the child of an overbearing father. So, two weeks away on the class trip is already enough to fill him with dread. But when a child goes missing, Nicolas' mind turns to gruesome possibilities, impelling him to take up the role of detective – and edge closer to a truth more shocking than Nicolas' worst fears. Translated by Linda Coverdale 'There are few great writers in France today, and Emmanuel Carrère is one of them' Paris Review Elegant, pocket-sized paperbacks, VINTAGE Editions celebrate the audacity and ambition of the written word, transporting readers to wherever in the world literary innovation may be found.

• Published: 6 August 2020
• ISBN: 9781473567573
• Imprint: Vintage Digital
• Format: EBook
• Contemporary fiction
• General & literary fiction

Emmanuel Carrère

Elegant, pocket-sized paperbacks, VINTAGE Editions celebrate the audacity and ambition of the written word, transporting readers to wherever in the world literary innovation may be found.

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE ADVERSARY

Little Nicolas is a delicate, timid schoolboy, with an excitable, if morbid imagination – the child of an overbearing father. So, two weeks away on the class trip is already enough to fill him with dread. But when a child goes missing, Nicolas’ mind turns to gruesome possibilities, impelling him to take up the role of detective – and edge closer to a truth more shocking than Nicolas’ worst fears.

Translated by Linda Coverdale

'There are few great writers in France today, and Emmanuel Carrère is one of them' Paris Review

About the author

Emmanuel Carrère, novelist, filmmaker, journalist, and biographer, is the award-winning internationally renowned author of The Adversary (a Sunday Times bestseller and New York Times Notable Book, translated into twenty-three languages), Lives Other Than My Own , My Life as a Russian Novel , Class Trip , Limonov (winner of the 2011 Prix Renaudot), The Mustache and, most recently, The Kingdom .

Also by Emmanuel Carrère

Praise for Class Trip

The most important French writer you've never heard of Robert McCrum

There are few great writers in France today, and Emmanuel Carrère is one of them Paris Review

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The Moustache and Class Trip by Emmanuel Carrère reviews — a strange story with a hairy ending

You might think you know what’s real and what’s not, but Emmanuel Carrère doesn’t believe you. Carrère, a bestselling author in France, has written a series of curious books that have been described by critics as “heroically self-indulgent”, “straight berserk” and “tremendously French”. He’s best known in this country for genre-bending works such as his fictionalised biography Limonov about a hellraising Russian punk-poet, his porn-and-Bible romp The Kingdom and his “non-fiction novel” The Adversary .

Success breeds success and now we’ve been given two of his early works, both short novels that further Carrère’s appetite for taking our sense of reality and giving it a pasting. The Moustache (1986) is a psychological horror story about whether or not a man used to have a moustache.

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Class Trip: A Novel Hardcover – January 1, 1997

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• Print length 162 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Henry Holt & Co
• Publication date January 1, 1997
• Dimensions 5.25 x 1 x 7.5 inches
• ISBN-10 0805046941
• ISBN-13 978-0805046946
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Henry Holt & Co; First Edition (January 1, 1997)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 162 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0805046941
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0805046946
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.6 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 1 x 7.5 inches
• #1,482 in French Literature (Books)
• #28,705 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction

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