For a bunch of SIX (6) y/o, they were incredibly advanced..in more ways than one. There was lots of philosophical inner monologue for one. I don't remember being six, but I sure as hell know I wasn't thinking about the meaning of life and friendships at that age. There was also this weird three-way relationship between this trio where they were 'in love' with each other. What does a six year old know about romantic love? Having a crush is one thing, but to this extent? Hugo furrowed his brow, remembered his mother's instructions when she had to go out for a long time in the evening. "Try to call me. You remember my number?" "Yes, Mom," Hugo answered, reciting the ten digits in a single breath. "And if you can't reach me, if you're hurt, if there's a fire, if you're in danger, if someone is trying to get in the house, you dial 112 – that's a 1, another 1, and a 2 – you wait for them to answer and you tell them what's going on, okay?" Nothing had ever happened the evenings Nathalie wasn't there; Hugo simply waited in fear that one of those terrifying things should happen, his personality no doubt being shaped by the thought that at any moment tragedy could strike, that a threat weighed constantly on every living being, promising to snatch him away someday, to abuser him or snuff him out. And tonight, the tragedy had actually occurred, an evening when, like so many other evenings, Nathalie had left her son lone in the dark. It wasn't really her fault this time, but she had still left him alone in the dark in the middle of the forest, like so many little characters in the stories she never read him. Unflinching in its savagery, the nightmarish poetry of this modern Lord of the Fliesis undeniable." – Publishers Weekly I have no idea why these names are so peculiar for towns. Trying to translate them only offered that clocher means “bell tower” in English. Can anyone with French knowledge help?

Twelve students and three chaperones enter the woods for a camping trip and none of them come out alive. That's not a spoiler, that is in the book synopsis. So I knew this wasn't going to be all rainbows and lollipops but this guy took it so far deeper and darker than I was expecting. It was nearly relentless. The Law of the Skies is not an easy book to digest, and I’m sure it won’t be to everyone’s tastes, but I found it exhilarating to read a novel that’s this unflinching, this nihilistic, and also this deeply profound.The following is an exclusive excerpt from The Law of the Skies , a terrifying novel by France’s Grégoire Courtois, translated by Rhonda Mullins, which finds a class of six-year-olds on a camping trip. But nature is even scarier than their campfire stories, and fatal dangers begins to mark their adventure. The sun had come up, revealing a cloak of damp fog that had risen from the ground and gotten tangled in the trunks and the branches, gently cooling them to let them know that a new day had arrived, filled with the quiet savagery so typical of natural spaces, where plants try to develop faster than animals can consume them, and where animals try to draw on the plants' energy to avoid the fangs of their brethren for one more day. Except for Enzo, who was still sleeping, all those whom this tale has so far spared had seen the sky grow paler, and then the first rays appeared on the horizon, because their sleep had been light, punctuated by fretful wakefulness, stifled sobs, startled awakenings that dragged them out of nightmares in which trees, beasts, and monsters grabbed them to bring their travels to an end.

Can you tell me a story, ma'am?" Enzo asked, pressed against this plump woman and burning with an affection that was brand new to him. "I cant get to sleep without a story," he lied, surprising himself at having come up with this strange request, he who despised stories, who hated being told them more than anything, who seethed with rage in listening to edifying tales in which a ridiculous moral turned the entertainment to a gaping wound from which the pus of the lesson seeped, as if no story, no life, no event on earth deserved to be told if it did not contain the inevitable lesson that people revel in and that bore to tears first their children, then their fellow creatures, and finally the unfortunate cohorts of future generations once they develop a taste for writing them. Three bodies on the ground – their sallowness, their stillness, the armies of insects that were climbing all over them and crawling in and out of their orifices confirmed that they were no longer children. Stylistically, it’s interesting, with the focus shifting rapidly between characters, from the predator to the various—and rapidly dwindling—groups of prey. The narrator gives us lengthy passages about the characters’ personal histories and the psychology of the group dynamics, and the adult commentary over the childrens’ choices and conversations and fears makes it even more of an unsettling read than it already is? PDF / EPUB File Name: The_Laws_of_the_Skies_-_Gregoire_Courtois.pdf, The_Laws_of_the_Skies_-_Gregoire_Courtois.epub The little girl was trembling, her arms crossed against her torso, her mouth distorted in permanent sadness. When she closed her eyes, over and over she saw Fred's blood spattering by the campfire. She hadn't been able to sleep, hadn't even wanted to, huddled in the body heat of her slumbering classmates, but had stayed fully awake, eyes wide open to the dank darkness of the log. She couldn't get the horrific episode she had witnessed out of her mind, or understand it, or learn the slightest lesson from it. An adult, the only adult who was supposed to take care of her, had been killed, obliterated, destroyed, and this initial trauma reverberated in her, and its power destroyed every part of her budding personality. Dolls, princesses, sparkly dresses, pink strollers, a plastic stove, the "my darlings," the "my loves," life as she knew it, all the carefully constructed images of her future, assembled in miniature in her bedroom like a seed, like a fetus, that would grow, the stove becoming a real stove, the stroller a real stroller, and the dolly in it a real baby, on this stage, in this scale model that was the beginning and the end of her existence, none of it featured a smashed skull or spurting blood, and that was as it should be, but for Lilou, this posed a metaphysical problem. The event had infiltrated her, like a pebble in the gears, like a semicolon in a line of computer code, and she had crashed; she simply stopped functioning, her mind at least, her ability to think, her manner of perceiving the world. Nothing was working anymore, which was, to some extent, the case for all the children who had witnessed Fred's murder, but in Lilou it took on psychiatric proportions.The cries of the children calling for their mothers had filled the space and made everything tremble, tremors that reached the most obtuse of sensibilities, moving anyone who could detect the vibration, that is, anyone other than you, dear reader, who have the privilege and the curse of grasping the unbearable birds-eye view of a forest, plunged into the darkness of one inconsequential night, from which rise the cries for help of children left to their own devices, and children who have died, or who will die, and whose salvation you can do nothing for." Precisely,' the old seagull said, setting his heavy webbed foot on the mouse's tiny paw. 'We taught them the laws of the skies. Do you want us to teach you the laws of the skies, flying mouse?' What a crazy short story. If you are sensitive to death, gore, and some very creative depictions of both.. do not read.