A precious teenager in a French suburb find himself powerfully troublingly drawn to a girl he sees every day on the way to school as he watches and things about her, his daydreams full of lyric from joy division, and the Smiths fairytales flowers for Algon, sexual desire, and fear, loneliness, rage for escape, and patience to grow up reveal an entire adolescence. And this fleeting erotic obsession, remembered years later, blossoms into a meditation on what it means to be a smart kid, what it means to be dumb, and what it means to be in love with another person.

ISBN: 9780374100216