Retellnig the aircraft tragedy of Edith Piaf's lover

You could, if you felt so inclined, spend a lot of time arguing over how precisely to categorise this debut book by French writer and editor Adrien Bosc. In an author's note preceding the text, Bosc insists 'Constellation is unequivocally a novel, a true life novel to probe the fiction at the heart of our lives'.

And if the author says it’s a novel, well, then it must be one, in this case a fictionalised account of a real event – the air disaster of 27 October 1949 when an Air France plane, a Lockheed Constellation flying from Paris to New York, crashed into a mountainside in the Azores, killing all 48 passengers and crew.

Among the deceased were Edith Piaf’s lover, the boxer Marcel Cerdan; the violin virtuoso Ginette Neveu; Kay Kamen, the man who sold Walt Disney on the idea of merchandising; five Basque shepherds emigrating to America; and a poor textile worker called Amelie Ringler, on the way to claim a life-changing inheritance. Bosc tells us their stories in turn, bringing them vividly to life as he does so, yet it’s difficult to think of any instances in which the author has attempted to imagine their inner lives.