Written with restraint and a touch of cynical disillusionment, Bonjour Tristesse centers on Cecile, a 17-year-old girl, self-absorbed but endearing, whose meddling in her father’s love life leads to tragic consequences. When Anne, her deceased mother’s best friend, and her father develop a relationship that seems annoyingly intrusive, Cecile and her boyfriend set in motion a plan that brutally claims an unexpected victim. Deceptively simple in structure, Bonjour Tristesse is complex and beautifully composed study of casual amorality and a young woman’s sexual initiation. Sympathetic and unsparing, Françoise Sagan takes readers into the mind of a precocious girl on the brink of womanhood as she attempts to understand and control the world around her.
