After the Crash
The recent explosion of Scandinavian thrillers is what we have come to call a literary phenomenon. But the trend is spreading. From France this month, much of it set in northern France, comes Michel Bussi’s After the Crash, which opens with a Turkish Airbus crashing in the Jura Mountains on a Christmas flight from Istanbul to Paris. Even today, “Don’t fly home for Christmas” remains one of the most alarming warnings people receive from morbid friends about the dangers of flying.
Here is the story of a disaster in which all but one of a flight’s passengers die. The survivor is a baby girl, found near the wreckage. The twist is that there were two baby girls on board and, since both sets of parents have been killed, nobody can precisely identify the survivor.
The year is 1980, just before the establishment of DNA testing. The story, in which I am now immersed, is endlessly unfurled but undeniably gripping. With rival grandparents - a rich industrialist family on the one hand, the impoverished owners of a waffle-and-chip van on the other - claiming adoption rights, the tale develops in a very French manner. Who will end up winning the child? There are tiny hints of Zola, perhaps even of Flaubert, along the way.
But, with the advent of a private investigator, After the Crash also becomes a tease - spookier and more sinister as it progresses. Now about halfway through it, I admit I am hooked. Even if the ending may prove to be less revelatory than I am hoping for, it is easy to see why this substantial book has already sold more than 700,000 copies. Michel Bussi is clearly someone to watch.
21 March 2015
The recent explosion of Scandinavian thrillers is what we have come to call a literary phenomenon. But the trend is spreading. From France this month, much of it set in northern France, comes Michel Bussi’s After the Crash, which opens with a Turkish Airbus crashing in the Jura Mountains on a Christmas flight from Istanbul to Paris. Even today, “Don’t fly home for Christmas” remains one of the most alarming warnings people receive from morbid friends about the dangers of flying.
Here is the story of a disaster in which all but one of a flight’s passengers die. The survivor is a baby girl, found near the wreckage. The twist is that there were two baby girls on board and, since both sets of parents have been killed, nobody can precisely identify the survivor.
The year is 1980, just before the establishment of DNA testing. The story, in which I am now immersed, is endlessly unfurled but undeniably gripping. With rival grandparents - a rich industrialist family on the one hand, the impoverished owners of a waffle-and-chip van on the other - claiming adoption rights, the tale develops in a very French manner. Who will end up winning the child? There are tiny hints of Zola, perhaps even of Flaubert, along the way.
But, with the advent of a private investigator, After the Crash also becomes a tease - spookier and more sinister as it progresses. Now about halfway through it, I admit I am hooked. Even if the ending may prove to be less revelatory than I am hoping for, it is easy to see why this substantial book has already sold more than 700,000 copies. Michel Bussi is clearly someone to watch.
21 March 2015
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