Dear Edward

I had this book on my to-read list for a very long time. Some of the reviews weren’t very positive, so I hesitated, but after Cabane, I needed something shorter, easier, less philosophical, and less French!

It turned out to be neither much easier nor much shorter, but it was a lovely story. Eddy, who is 11 years old, his brother, and his parents are on a plane on their way to California when it crashes, and everyone dies except Eddy.

The book moves back and forth between the plane’s final moments and Eddy’s new life with his aunt and uncle. It also tells the stories of many passengers: a wounded soldier, a young woman who hopes to get married, a rich old man, a woman who’s already lived hundreds of lives, a good-looking author, a red-haired doctor, etc.

Some reviewers said there were “too many characters” in the book, but I really enjoyed getting to know them all. I thought it was important to understand how Eddy’s survival affected their relatives and friends, and how their lives affected his, too, in the end. Also, I’ll never look at people on a plane around me the same way!

It sounds like a depressing book, and it was sad, but it was also full of hope and very insightful. It shows how we, as humans, still struggle to face death and understand grief. The part about the letters from the survivors’ relatives was both shocking and fascinating, as was everything about the media and social media, and how people around the world reacted to the crash and Eddy’s survival.

Something strange happened while I was listening to the book: I kept thinking it sounded like the story of Air France flight 447, which crashed en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris in 2009. I recognized the dialogue between the pilots at the time of the crash because I used it in my class in 2022. And at the end of the book, the author confirms that she used that exact dialogue in that book. The idea for the book also came from the real story of Ruben van Assouw, the sole survivor of Afriqiyah Airways flight 771, which crashed in Libya in 2010.

Anyway, I thought it was a very well-written book, tactful, sad but not overly dramatic, never cheesy, about how this little boy and the people around him rebuilt their lives after this terrible accident.

It’s a book I could read again in a year or two.