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I’d been hearing about this novel since I was in high school. It was written and is a first-person narrative by a precocious seventeen-year-old French girl, Cécile, by a seventeen-year-old author, Françoise Sagan. I was motivated to finally read it now because my latest novel, Paris Escapade, stars and is narrated by a seventeen-year-old American boy, Eddie, an aspiring author.

I buy a lot of books. I don’t read very fast, so getting them from the library necessitates my constantly asking for extensions. I can’t bring myself to pay $10 for a Kindle, so I bargain-hunt. My go-to bookseller is BookFinder, a huge database of new and used books. So I ordered the least-expensive copy of Bonjour Tristesse in good condition I could find. I couldn’t believe what I got. It appears to be a leatherbound hardback original 1955 edition of the English translation. It’s a skinny little book – only 128 pages, but the red cover is embossed on the front with Françoise Sagan’s initials, and the binding – though slim – is embossed and ornamented with gold lettering and designs. Unfortunately, I took this photo with my phone, so you can’t see the exquisite detail.

And now, the review: Bonjour Tristesse is the account of a teenage girl who lives with her widowed father, a bon vivant and ladies’ man. He treats Cécile as an adult and takes her along to all kinds of parties and dinners. She adores him and the life he allows her to lead, virtually without limits, discipline, or restrictions. They have taken a villa on the Côte d’Azur for the summer.

Then her father, Raymond, becomes engaged to Ann, an old friend of his late wife, a woman of forty – almost his own age. Although Cécile is fond of Ann, admires her poise and elegance, she sees her gradually imposing her values and lifestyle on her father and, by extension, on her.

So, Cécile schemes to get rid of Ann by dangling a glamorous young woman under Raymond’s nose.

Taking into account that this book was written in the early fifties, and so is not quite as sophisticated or shocking as it must have been in its time (I gather it caused quite a stir), I give this book pretty high marks: It kept me engaged ‘til the end, which is saying a lot, given my impatient nature, and I enjoyed the ambience of the South of France in the summer in the fifties, as I am a bit of a Francophile. So, if your tastes drift toward the retro and the Eurocentric like mine, I recommend it.