Tiny Book Review: Bonjour Tristesse, by Francoise Sagan

Bonjour Tristesse, by Francoise Sagan

Read during Corona lockdown, May 2020. 

SPOILERS! Read with caution if you haven't read the book and want to.

Apparently, this shocked the hell out of everyone when it first came out, in 1954, even though it was France (where everyone is just generally much cooler than England!).  I haven't yet read the why, because I'm still mulling the actual book, and I didn't want social history right this minute, though I'll look it up later.  Personally, I would only be shocked to read this because of its honesty.  I could almost describe it as searing.  

So, this is the set-up: Cecile, the heroine sees a life ahead for herself of dissipation and amoralty, because it sounds easy and fun (I'm paraphrasing).  She and her father have lived doing whatever they want since her mother died some long while ago - they have enough money, and he is permissive with her.  She in turn gets on with her father's mistresses as they come and go because she sees he needs them, like a child with toys.  They don't threaten her world with him.  She especially likes the current one, Elsa.  Then comes Anne, a serious woman, a businesswoman, someone who says things that make you think about how you're living your life, and you suspect she may be right in some of the things she says that don't feel like so much fun.  How dare she make you think?!  But you like her, sort of...But you like your life before she came more...And then she gets engaged to your father. Story continues...

I’m a bit annoyed that I read the novella, then the Introduction, and then came to write this.  I should have come directly here straight after the book, as the Rachel Cusk introduction (Penguin ediation) threw up so many interesting ideas and questions that now my head is full of those rather than my own impressions of the book.  Exactly the same reason I never go round art exhibits with the tape guides on my head.  I want to have my thoughts before I have someone else’s, or I’ll be hard pressed to separate the two unless I disagree violently with the guide. 

Anyway, I loved this.  I enjoyed Cecile’s acceptance of her own nature, her dislike of being made to think.  It was partly her youth – there is, I think, something amoral and selfish in young people, and here it was captured perfectly.  There was also in her something almost neurodivergent – the way she almost turned her love on and off, the way it was just flashes of ‘radiant moments’ for her, the way she was caught up in tales and times, and then later felt nothing about them.  That feels familiar, all of that. 

I didn’t see coming her desire to get rid of her father’s fiancée working so well.  I had no idea she’d end up causing a death by misadventure at the least, after being so Machiavellian.  Her detached amazement at her own manipulative ability and how well it all worked – also familiar, but also sad.  She had more layers than she liked to think she did.  I think she was a bit dismayed at how easily lead people were, especially her father’s ex-mistress, Elsa.   

This was wonderfully French, in terms of how morally sophisticated and/or blase their national stereotype is compared to our nationally stereotypical stuffy English – I can’t offhand think of any English books where a father and his daughter go on a seaside holiday with his mistress, and then his fiancée comes too, and technically it’s just a bit awkward, that’s all. *Loved it.*  Something very down to earth about not making a drama of it all…until there was a bit of a created drams, then there was that sentence where Cecile said that in order for she and her father to be inwardly ‘reposeful’ they needed to be outwardly ‘in ferment’…so I’m overgeneralising like crazy. Also, many years ago, in a very turbulent situation, my dead ex-husband once suggested an arrangement very similar and I cried, heartbroken.  Now, being me as I am now, I would have punched his face.  I’m just not French enough to be cool with being the live in mistress…

The whole question of lack of mothers and motherly nurturing and growing up , and where do you learn your 'morals' from – I didn’t really think of that till I read the Introduction, but it’s applicable comment. Anne was a strange fish too – and the way Cecile only really saw her properly when she’d broken her [seeing through the cool, almost glacial woman to the secretive, lonely child inside], was a growing up experience that Cecile tried to bury almost immediately by sinking back into her past life.  I wonder if her father will end up as Anne prophesied, spent, a bit pathetic?  This was a very enjoyable, thought provoking read.  Could have said far more, but I just want to let it percolate through.  The selfishness of youth, wanting not to grow up, to admit your actions affect others – that may be what I think the story is about; not only how Cecile got to be the way she was.  10/10.  

 

 

Francoise Sagan