It was not good to be a jet-set figure in the late 1990s. On July 16, 1999, two years after Lady Di’s fatal car accident, Carolyn Bessette and her husband, John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr., They in turn died off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard in the crash of their plane, piloted by the son of the former president. “John-John” had everything going for him: in 1988, the year he turned 27, the brilliant heir was voted the sexiest man on the planet by the magazine People. The good life is his? That meant counting without competition from an annoying gigolo…
In 1996, “John-John” married the socialite Carolyn Bessette. Some fairy tales have behind the scenes scenes that you don’t see in Disney films. Before meeting son Kennedy, Carolyn experienced a burning passion for Michael Bergin, an apollo who made a career thanks to his cool bodybuilder body – after having been a model for Calvin Klein underwear, the youngster will appear shirtless in Baywatch. Mrs. Kennedy will never be able to definitively separate from this lover. From time to time, she reminds him.
This addiction hides another: she is addicted to cocaine. Very quickly her marriage foundered, the pressure from the paparazzi and the fact that she had no children did not help – hell lasted three years until the tragic end. Liking to write about flamboyant couples, Stéphanie des Horts wonderfully recounts the fall of these two moguls. His tight book, both melancholic and dapper, will please readers of Bret Easton Ellis as well as subscribers of Paris Match.
Carolyn and John, by Stéphanie des Horts. Albin Michel, 275 p., €21.90.