Corniche Kennedy by Maylis de Kerangal was published in 2008 and adapted in a movie in 2016. It takes place along the Corniche Kennedy, a scenic road that borders the Mediterranean Sea in the city of Marseille in the south of France. An expressway separating posh villas from a seaside without a beach, just a vertiginous slope of rocks where a few idle teenagers find daily refuge in the summertime, quarreling, bragging and flirting. Eddy's gang, who took possession of the place, specialized in somersaults. Defying their own fear, they have made these high-flying dives a kind of initiation rite and they keep provoking the policemen who try to prevent them from jumping. All it will take is for an intruder, Suzanne, a rich kid from the surrounding area, to join them, to sow disorder in the gang and accuse certain rivalries between the petty, cheap bosses. Childish games, just young people in search of strong emotions, but things will soon get worse. Not far from there, a detective in charge of monitoring this sensitive coastal area, spies on the actions of these "little jerks", most of whom come from the poorer districts of Marseille. Insidiously, the two stories will converge in a disheveled scenario and the novel soon becomes a thriller.

Corniche Kennedy is an exhilarating book about youth and its search for limits, passion and thrills. Kerangal offers us a breathless and gasping reading about this diverse and sometimes desperate youth under the Mediterranean sun.

We read this book in the spring of 2021.