In 1949 a
group of very different people met eachother. Among them were the boxer Marcel
Cerdan who was going to America to win back his title and to meet his mistress
Edith Piaf, but also the French violinist Ginette Neveu and her brother were
there.
And other people like shepherds from Spain, a young girl on her way to
meet her aunt and a man who hoped to reconcile with his ex-wife.
There was even
a painter on board who should have left the day before, but who gave up his seat
to an actress who had too much luggage.
All of them
boarded the Constellation on the evening of October 27th to bring
them from Paris to New York and their lives will be linked forever, because
that plane crashed just before they had to land to refuel before they would
begin their journey across the Atlantic Ocean.
Soon after
all contact with the plane was lost, people feared for an accident and other
planes began a searchparty. The remains were soon found, there were no
survivors.
Constellation is the debut novel of Adrien Bosc. He does not only reconstruct what happened that night,
but also tells us the stories of all those people who were on board. Yes, there
were some famous people on board and a lot of attention went to them, but in
total there were forty-eight people on board and this book makes sure they will
not be forgotten.
The inquest
into the planecrash was made difficult by the fact that something like a black
box did not exist back then. They finally found out what happened by having another
plane of the same type fly the same route, a shadowflight.
Adrien Bosc manages to bring the people on that plane
alive, often in a touching way. The inquest is interesting and some of the
mistakes that are made are very painful. This book won the Grand Prix du roman de l’Académie Française, Adrien Bosc is a new writer to keep an eye on!
Original
French title: Constellation
Published
in 2014
There's actually a copy of this book in a library near me. :) I'm putting it on hold and should get it some time next week. It sounds like a good one. Thanks for the review and recommendation!
ReplyDeleteThat is gooed news, I hope you will like it as much as I did, please let me know!
DeleteKind regards,