This autumn's literary surprise is the first novel by a Saint-Rémy-de-Provence local on whom fate seems to be smiling.
Having won the Prix de la Vocation and the Académie Française's Grand Prix du Roman as well as being shortlisted (at the time of writing) for the Interallié and Goncourt des Lycéens prizes, Adrien Bosc is being fêted in the Alpilles' capital, the entire town singing his praises as teachers reminisce fondly about the boy with the twinkling blue eyes. Now 28 with a family and his own publishing company, Editions du Sous-sol, Adrien Bosc may have grown up, but he admits that at the moment he doesn't really have his feet on the ground. His novel Constellation also takes us up into the skies, aboard the Constellation F-BAZN, sharing the fate of its 48 passengers and crew. In 193 pages he recounts the inexorable sequence of events and coincidences by which fate, bad luck and the hazards of life brought these men and women together on the Air France Paris-New York flight that crashed in 1949. Marcel Cerdan was flying to join Edith Piaf; young violin prodigy Ginette Neveu was pursuing her dream; Disney's head of merchandising Kay Kamen was returning to the studios; five Basque shepherds were off to become cowboys. "Forty-eight people died. That's the number of constellations Ptolemy plotted," remarks the writer. "I linked these destinies together like stars in a constellation."
« Constellation » d’Adrien Bosc, Editions Stock.
By Valérie Rouger
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