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Ailes ouvertes: Carnet d'une aviatrice des années folles
144 pages
Published June 14, 2024
4 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 3, 2025
I don't suppose all solitary children end up as intrepid travellers, but it does seem to be something of a common thread in the women travellers I've come across over the last few weeks. The solitude gives rise to the search for something to do, and many of them turned to books - often to travel books. This gives rise to a spark which can ignite, which can ...
... in the case of Maryse Bastié, at any rate, lead the child to take to the skies when virtually no other woman was doing so, and to beat a whole host of aviation records (set mostly by women but by men too) in the 1920s and 1930s. So most of Bastié's travelling was done a few hundred metres above the earth, and her accounts of the stresses involved in beating a series of endurance and distance records are electrifying. This was a woman with uncommon reserves of determination.
But she always had to land, and the account of her arrival in a field in Russia after beating one distance record, with only a handful of half-remembered Russian phrases to help her, is pure slapstick.
Her account closes with what she regarded as her greatest aviation achievement - a non-stop crossing of the South Atlantic. This, and her other achievements, led to a stream of awards - not the least important of which was recognition of her role in the French Resistance in the Second World War.
Some people seem to live several lives in one, and Maryse Bastié was one such. How would she have chosen to end that life? Probably in the way it did - in a flying accident.
... in the case of Maryse Bastié, at any rate, lead the child to take to the skies when virtually no other woman was doing so, and to beat a whole host of aviation records (set mostly by women but by men too) in the 1920s and 1930s. So most of Bastié's travelling was done a few hundred metres above the earth, and her accounts of the stresses involved in beating a series of endurance and distance records are electrifying. This was a woman with uncommon reserves of determination.
But she always had to land, and the account of her arrival in a field in Russia after beating one distance record, with only a handful of half-remembered Russian phrases to help her, is pure slapstick.
Her account closes with what she regarded as her greatest aviation achievement - a non-stop crossing of the South Atlantic. This, and her other achievements, led to a stream of awards - not the least important of which was recognition of her role in the French Resistance in the Second World War.
Some people seem to live several lives in one, and Maryse Bastié was one such. How would she have chosen to end that life? Probably in the way it did - in a flying accident.
October 6, 2024
À une époque où les femmes devaient se battre à contre-courant pour être acceptées parmis les hommes et leur défis, ce récit est encourageant et plein d'espoir pour un monde avec plus d'éthique. Maryse s'est attelée à ses défis avec un dévouement complet et absolu.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews