Book Review: Francois Sagan’s Bonjour Tritesse (Hello Sadness) and Un certain sourire (A Certain Smile), Penguin edition.
By Harry Mottram: She pulled up sharply in her Citroen with a squeal of tyres and a surly look on her face. Clive James opened the car door and greeted the grumpy driver Francois Sagan. In a moment they were off racing erratically through the streets of Paris as Clive attempted to interview the writer and novelist. He looked disappointed with the ill tempered middle aged woman whose fame had been based on her ability to pen passionate stories of love and lust in 1950s France. Such are the cruelties of age. It was one of Clive James’ BBC documentaries in his Post Card From series with one of the first screened in 1989 from Paris shown on BBC i-player as well. He quizzed her on her driving and car accidents and there was a comical moment where she appeared to clip another motorist.
Her novel Bonjour Tristesse was mentioned and her subsequent fame due to becoming a highly successful author at just 18 years of age when Bonjour Tristesse was published in 1954. The story of a spoilt girl who is jealous of her father’s girlfriends while on a holiday in the South of France was to be followed by a string of novels, screenplays, songs, short stories, autobiographies, plays, films and even a ballet right up until six years before her death in 2004 aged 69. That glimpse of the Gallic literary genius (and it has to be said bad girl of Paris with her fast and dangerous driving, tax fraud case, cocaine and drug addiction and serious car crash which left her in a coma) did awaken me to her work and in particular Bonjour Tristesse which in the Penguin edition includes the novella Un certain sourire.
Review of Francois Sagan’s Bonjour Tritesse (Hello Sadness)
Sun, sex and selfish Cécile. Or it could read sun, sex and regrets. Francois Sagan’s Bonjour Tritesse was a smash hit when it was published in 1954 in France and a year later in the UK – despite some picky bits of censorship for the no-sex-please-we’re-British readership. Why is the question – well there’s two reasons. Firstly in post war France it was one of the first teenage novels that took feelings, passion and sex seriously which was so refreshing in the Catholic nation still recovering from four years of Nazi occupation. And the second reason is its gripping narrative, brevity and the candid nature of the narrator.
Cécile, 17, has daddy complex. Her mother died when she was two and her father is her idol and friend. He’s a player with girl friends, a shallow but full-on social life and laid back attitude to education meaning Cécile doesn’t have to complete her studies and can bum around all summer at their holiday home in the south of France. It may be an easy upbringing in one sense but she is not keen on her dad’s girl friends – in particular Elsa – his latest squeeze who is ‘very sweet, rather dim, and quite unpretentious.’ When they arrive at the place by the sea set back amongst a pine forest Elsa was not the golden skinned mistress but peeled and went red in the sun while Cécile soaked up the sun spending time in the sea and hitting it off with Cyril who was on vacation near by. If the arrival of Elsa was bad enough then shock horror Anne turned up on Raymond (Cécile’s dad) invitation and quickly took over proceedings by ordering Cécile to study and finish with Cyril. Elsa got pushed out but being dim didn’t set off to Paris in a huff. (Plot point.)
There is something compulsive about novels written in the first person as we only see the world through their eyes and thoughts and in Cécile we see how immature, selfish and manipulative she can be. In Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 novel Lolita we know that Humbert is evil as he plots to have sex with Dolores but somehow due to the way it is written we follow his every move because he reasons everything he does as justification for its core immorality. And in Cécile we fall into the same trap in trusting the unreliable narrator as in JD Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and Amy Dunne in Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.
Cécile is clever as she manipulates a situation involving the side-lined Elsa and her boyfriend Cyril (now through her they are briefly an item) as well as her father who she manages to get back in with Elsa in order to shock and frighten off Anne. She doesn’t explicitly tell these couples to have sex but without any words ensures they briefly hit it off in a way that Anne will know. And it works as the fall-out is dramatic, tragic and shocking. Her justification, her planning and the way she explains it to herself to ensure she is free of blame is so true – as we have all done things we regret but manage by going through events in our mind convince ourselves we are innocent.
Book Review: Francois Sagan’s Un certain sourire (A Certain Smile), Penguin edition.
In her second novel written in 1955, Francois Sagan’s Un certain sourire the unreliable narrator Dominique is a student who is in love with an older man Luc. She befriends Luc and his wife Françoise and has an affair with him ensuring Françoise is left in the dark through lies and deceit. Dominique like Cécile is obsessive about making sure the various relationships in her life are manipulated to her advantage. She has a boyfriend in Bertrand who she cheats on but justifies her two timing with Luc and his betrayal of Françoise. Like Cécile in Bonjour Tritesse the narrator is in love with a father figure who she wants to have herself while also having affairs.
There is one big difference in Cécile is not in physical love with her dad – she just wants him for herself – but in Un certain sourire Dominique is in love with Luc and does everything she can to win him over. It’s just he’s not in love with her which leaves her twisting and turning in mental torment throughout the story. Her internal reasoning and her attempts to manipulate everyone is its strength but without the drama of the slow burning plot and shocking climax of in Bonjour Tritesse it lacks the page turning compulsion of Sagan’s first novel.
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