Here, and Only Here

Una scuola piena di misteri, un club supersegreto e un’oscura, terribile minaccia. A school full of mysteries, a top secret club and a dark, terrible threat. It’s the first day of lessons and Iris immediately starts to notice some shadows lurking over the school building. Shoe prints on the ceilings as if someone were walking upside down, desks that move on their own, students who are chased out of the normal toilets and bullied, miracle-working gurus and a “Top Secret Club” that unites some students seeking the mysterious substance that causes the strange happenings in the school and that will lead to the end of the world. It’s a terrible world that appears behind the school gates. There will be no room for people who cry, who are weak, here: weaknesses are honed weapons in the hands of others, who will try every means of defending themselves from attacks, in order not to suffer wounds in their turn. Christelle Dabos’s eagerly awaited return to bookshops has many sides to it. Navigating between reality and fiction, magic and obscene language, the author has succeeded in creating a coming-of-age novel in which middle school increasingly resembles a kingdom built on rules and retaliation, in which adults appear merely as indistinct bit players. On crossing the school gates, the main character must face the definitive break with childhood and enter – metaphors aside – a new phase of life, in which her older sister won’t hold her hand any longer and she’ll be forced to grow. But she won’t be alone: together with her, Pierre, Madeleine and Guy will each narrate their own personal perspective. The style is rough and the language slangy, a far cry from the pomp of the previous saga but able to penetrate to the depths of the characters’ psychology. It will be impossible to remain indifferent to the intense self-examination that will plunge the reader into the core of the book.  

Qui, solo qui (Here, and Only Here)
by Christelle Dabos
E/O Edizioni