Where, even, to begin. Picture the indifferent or detached Mersault in The Stranger. This is your lead narrator, though he is far from apathetic in the English Lit classroom.

Now remember Hamlet's internal battle between desire and hesitation. This struggle between action and inaction characterizes your second narrator (though it is his voice who technically opens the narrative).

Then there is an impressioned (hesitant to say impressionable) girl, whose literary counterpart I haven't yet figured out.

All three stories come together in an international school in France. But as much as the classroom is a stage, so are select urban scenes in Paris. 

This is a book for those who are drawn to Dark Academia, to My Dark Vanessa, to The Plot and Kill All Your Darlings and The Secret History. But also for those who want to see Jean-Paul Sartre be applied to Hamlet and As I Lay Dying and The Stranger, for those who contemplate on the function of literature, for those who have ever admired or been admired by people from a distance.

While the student voices felt a little contrived for their age group, I will never forget the existential reflections on such quintessential texts, the mediations on what it means to be "on stage" as a teacher, the delectable but disturbing parallelism.

Would that I could reread this with virgin eyes again.

That said, trigger warnings.