Timothée de Fombelle, Saving Celeste, Walker Books, October 2021, 128 pp., RRP $18.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781406397192
This memorable and moving short novel by a celebrated French author and playwright was originally published in 2009. Only recently translated by award-winning translator Sarah Ardizzone, it is now readily accessible to English-speaking readers – and read it they should.
Narrated in the first person by an unnamed boy and set sometime in a polluted future, it tells the story of how he meets Celeste at school one day and then sets out to find her when she disappears. What he finds is a dying girl, but when he manages to persuade his distant, uninvolved but powerful mother who works for Industry to get her into hospital, things go from bad to worse. Celeste suddenly becomes invisible, all traces of her removed. Her condition is that of the world – for example, the mark on her forehead is the same shape as that of the Amazon rainforest – and she is dying because the earth is dying.
But no-one wants to know or to let any information about it to leak out. The boy tracks her down to a special ward of the hospital surrounded by armed guards and determines to rescue her with the help of his best friend Bryce’s Dad. What happens next is nail-biting and despite all, there is an optimistic tone to the ending.
This is one of those books which stays with the reader after finishing it. It feels as if it was quite prophetic when it was written and it makes a powerful statement without being the slightest bit ‘preachy’.
Reviewed by Lynne Babbage
