Bonjour Tristesse     by Françoise Sagan, Translated by Irene Ash Original language: French Published by HarperCollins Publishers Pub. Date: 2001 Format: Paperback, 144 pages Dimensions: (in inches): 0.41 x 7.14 x 5.04 ISBN: 0066211697 Edition: 1st Paperback Edition List Price: $13.95 Buy online from Amazon.com for $11.16 Published by Penguin Pub. Date: 1958 Pub. Place: UK Format: Paperback, 108 pages List Price: £4.99 Not available for ordering Published by J. MURRAY Pub. Date: 1955 Pub. Place: UK Format: 132 pages Not available for ordering

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‘A charming little monster’, according to François Mauriac, Sagan wrote this novel when she was seventeen and shot to immediate fame as a symbol of disillusioned youth. This is the story of Cécile’s first love affair during her summer holidays in the south of France. Seventeen and carefree, she has failed her exams but prefers Cyril’s company to that of her books, and her nonchalant father is too busy with his young mistress Elsa to object.


Theirs is the sad world of the rich and beautiful who throw themselves into ephemeral love affairs as a momentary distraction from the pain of loneliness. Elsa is ‘nice, quite simple and without serious aspirations’, never an obstacle to the father-daughter complicity. Things change dramatically when Elsa is ousted by Anne, a serious professional woman intent on turning Cécile into a studious girl and her father into a well-behaved husband. Cécile catches a glimpse of the sanitized life that awaits her in Paris and sets out to destroy it. She convinces Cyril and Elsa to pretend to be in love in order to provoke her father’s jealousy, not foreseeing the tragic consequences of her game.


Sagan’s achievement lies in the character of Cécile, whose teenage dreams of power and seduction never overturn her lucid understanding of the adult world and its values. Her indolent characters are often reminiscent of Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age ravers, but they lack the style and excitement, the obsession with success that pervaded America’s ‘lost generation’. It’s not that they have lost their faith in the world, they probably never had any to begin with; they suffer from an existential ennui very characteristic of postwar France and beautifully captured by the laconic tone of this book.

‘Amidst the turmoil of our flat, which was sometimes bare, at others full of flowers, the stage for many and varied scenes, often cluttered up with luggage, I somehow could not envisage the introduction of order, the peace and quiet, the feeling of harmony that Anne brought with her everywhere she went, as if they were the most precious gifts. I dreaded being bored to death; although I was less apprehensive of her influence since my love for Cyril had liberated me from many of my fears. I feared boredom and tranquillity more than anything. In order to achieve serenity, my father and I had to have excitement, and this Anne was not prepared to admit.’ p93