Among the releases of the winter literary returnwe find the new novel by Philippe Besson“Tell you about my son” (Julliard). Available since Thursday, January 2, the book tells the story of a teenager who committed suicide after being the victim of school bullying.
The story of Hugo, a teenager victim of school bullying
The story takes place at Saint-Nazairewhere Vincent and his wife Juliette try to face the insurmountable after the suicide of their son Hugo. Victim of school bullying, the fourteen-year-old teenager experienced a descent into hell before ending his life.
While the parents prepare to participate in a white march in tribute to Hugo, the father relives the whole story in his head, taking the reader on a journey of several months of persecution for the schoolboy.
The mechanisms of school bullying
The book addresses the mechanisms of harassment at school by raising many current issues, such asimpotence of the adults and institutions facing school bullying.
Today, while school bullying continues to claim increasingly young victims in France, it remains difficult to quantify this scourge with precision. Studies, notably carried out by associations, however, underline that school bullying is one of the main factors pushing young people to suicidal thoughts or acts.
A story to denounce the limits of current systems
With a rhythmic story and one frank writingPhilippe Besson remains true to himself by once again tackling a worrying social subject. He manages to captivate the reader from the beginning to the end of the story with an alternation between the past and the present.
The whole thing gives a poignant story about human relationships, witness to an ordinary family, who helplessly sees their daily life turned upside down. We perhaps regret the bias of focusing the story on the point of view of the victim’s family only. The words of the harassers are sometimes missing from the work.
Beyond the literary object, the book denounces the limits of current systems and the general inability to stem the problems of school bullying in France, recalling the urgency of tackling this scourge head on.
