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 that this is largely the result of his parents’ over-protectiveness. Indeed, his father insists on driving him to the chalet despite its being three hundred miles away, rather than letting him board the bus hired by the school. Nicolas arrives late, already marked as the “weird” one, and is mortified even further when his father leaves with Nicolas’ luggage still in the car boot. Throughout the novel there are other clues that the relationships within his family are not entirely normal.

Nicolas has an over-active imagination, fuelled by his solitude and by his father’s penchant for telling nightmarish stories about kidnapped children and organ theft. For much of the novella he wallows in self-pity. The disappearance of a young boy gives him the opportunity to play the detective and achieve the popularity he craves. It’s hardly a spoiler to state that, in this, Nicolas will be disappointed although I will not state the how or why.

Class Trip has often been described as a horror novella. I’m not sure I agree, but the work does have enough elements in common with the genre to make this classification a reasonable one. Throughout there is a sense of morbidity, a feeling of dread which reaches a climax in the final pages. The work starts off as a coming-of-age novel but soon morphs into something much darker. What is particularly unsettling (and quite Gothic in approach) is that, throughout, the truth seems to be just out of our grasp. There is a constant interplay between fantasy and reality, wakefulness and sleep (or the lack thereof), truth and falsehood. Much is suggested, little is revealed. Class Trip is a chilling, yet understated, read. ( )

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 that this is largely the result of his parents’ over-protectiveness. Indeed, his father insists on driving him to the chalet despite its being three hundred miles away, rather than letting him board the bus hired by the school. Nicolas arrives late, already marked as the “weird” one, and is mortified even further when his father leaves with Nicolas’ luggage still in the car boot. Throughout the novel there are other clues that the relationships within his family are not entirely normal.

Nicolas has an over-active imagination, fuelled by his solitude and by his father’s penchant for telling nightmarish stories about kidnapped children and organ theft. For much of the novella he wallows in self-pity. The disappearance of a young boy gives him the opportunity to play the detective and achieve the popularity he craves. It’s hardly a spoiler to state that, in this, Nicolas will be disappointed although I will not state the how or why.

Class Trip has often been described as a horror novella. I’m not sure I agree, but the work does have enough elements in common with the genre to make this classification a reasonable one. Throughout there is a sense of morbidity, a feeling of dread which reaches a climax in the final pages. The work starts off as a coming-of-age novel but soon morphs into something much darker. What is particularly unsettling (and quite Gothic in approach) is that, throughout, the truth seems to be just out of our grasp. There is a constant interplay between fantasy and reality, wakefulness and sleep (or the lack thereof), truth and falsehood. Much is suggested, little is revealed. Class Trip is a chilling, yet understated, read. ( )

Emmanuel Carrère - [La Classe de neige]
Emmanuel Carrères short novel was published in 1995 and made into a film Class Trip (English title) in 1998. It is an atmospheric mystery story of a pre-teen schoolboy's disastrous school trip for a week of ski-ing lessons. Nicholas the small and overprotected boy knows he will not fit in and dreads the week ahead. The mystery story tinged with horror works well enough, but it is the authors pertinent depiction of a nervous boy that is the real star of this book.

Nicholas is a compulsive collector of free gifts from petrol stations when we meet him, probably immature for his age and frightened that his occasional bed-wetting will cause him acute embarrassment when he has to undergo his school trip. He compensates for his immaturity with a vivid sense of imagination, he is learning how the adult world works and knows enough to manipulate issues to his own advantage, but comes horribly unstuck when he misjudges events in the ski resort. His sensitive nature elicits care from some adults around him, but opens him up to ridicule from his peer group.

His school trip gets off to a bad start when his father insists on making a 400km round trip to save him travelling on the school bus and then driving off without unloading his suitcase. He immediately becomes the odd boy out and it is only when Hodkann the largest boy in the group and something of a loner himself, offers to lend him nightclothes that Nicholas is saved further embarrassment. Nicholas has his first wet dream that night and wakes up thinking he has wet the bed. In his shame and anxiety he wanders outside in the snow where he would have frozen to death if he had not been able to get inside the parked car of Patrick, one of the teachers. Nicholas immediately develops a fever and is separated from the rest of the group with a camp bed made up in the head teachers office. Nicholas loves the attention from the adults and when he overhears that his diagnosis might be somnambulism he acts up his symptoms. From this point on Nicholas can do what he does best and that is to invent a slightly imaginary world with himself at the centre. A horrible murder of a young boy in the ski resort fires his fantasies and his exaggeration of the events leads him to invent stories that involves Hodkann.

The closeted warmth of Nicholas' world in the cafe, where he can watch the other boys sk-ing and the office contrasts with the first snows that blanket the world outside. Nicholas' vivid imagination fires the mystery and the reader searches for clues as to what has happened. Much of what is happening comes from Nicholas' point of view, where adult conversations, huddled shapes merge with Nicholas' fears and obsessions. One short chapter three quarters of the way through the book has Nicolas meeting up with Hodkann by accident in Paris some twenty years later. Nicolas fears for his life. This sharpens the mystery as to what is happening in the ski-resort.

This is a well written story of a sensitive boy's first real experience in an adult world. Nicolas will learn much of what has happened, but the reader must work a little, to piece it together. I enjoyed the hot-house atmosphere created, the insight into the thoughts and actions of young Nicholas and the mystery story and so 4 stars. ( )

Résumé :
La classe de neige commence mal pour Nicolas ; déjà, son père n'a pas voulu le laisser monter dans le car avec les autres et a tenu à le conduire en personne au chalet, histoire qu'il se fasse bien remarquer.

En plus, Nicolas n'est pas du genre à s'intégrer facilement ; or, arrivés la veille, les autres ont déjà pris leurs marques : rien de tel pour qu'il se sente encore un peu plus en retrait.

Mais surtout, il a oublié son sac dans le coffre de la voiture de son père, et c'est le début de la torture : sûr que les autres enfants vont se moquer de lui, sûr qu'il fera pipi au lit dans un pyjama qui ne lui appartient même pas, sûr que Hodkann, le chef des enfants, va en faire son souffre-douleur.

Les terreurs enfantines ainsi lancées ne cesseront plus et prendront le goût amer de la réalité : le père, qui ne rapporte pas le sac, René, le petit garçon disparu, les gendarmes, qui vadrouillent et les adultes qui parlent à demi-mots... Un roman fascinant, pour lequel l'auteur a obtenu le prix Femina en 1995. --Karla Manuele

Cortito, se lee muy bien. No es que trate un tema novedoso ni de una manera sorprendente pero se sale de lo ya leido y se te hace corta la lectura. ( )