I said to myself, This is the sort of enterprise very, very few girls of my age devote themselves to I’ll never be able to finish it. I had a strong desire to write and some free time. How did you come to start Bonjour tristesse when you were eighteen? Did you expect it would be published?

She is sincere and helpful, but questions that are pompous or elaborate, or about personal life, or that might be interpreted as challenging her work, are liable to elicit only a simple “oui” or “non,” or “je ne sais pas-je ne sais pas du tout”-and then an amused, disconcerting smile. She speaks in a high-pitched but quiet voice and she clearly does not enjoy being interviewed or asked to articulate in a formal way what are, to her, natural assumptions about her writing. She wore a simple black sweater and gray skirt if she is a vain girl the only indication of it was her high-heeled shoes, which were of elegantly worked light gray leather. Her manner is shy, but casual and friendly, and her gamine face crinkles easily into an attractive, rather secret smile. She met the interviewer in the comfortably furnished living room, seated them in large chairs drawn up to a marble fireplace, and offered them scotch from a pint bottle which was unquestionably, somehow, her own contribution to the larder. But when she was interviewed early last spring just before the publication of Un Certain sourire, she lived across the city in her parents’ apartment on the Boulevard Malesherbes in a neighborhood that is a stronghold of the well-to-do French bourgeoisie. Interviewed by Blair Fuller & Robert Silvers Issue 14, Autumn 1956įrançoise Sagan now lives in a small and modern ground-floor apartment of her own on the Rue de Grenelle, where she is busily writing a film script and some song lyrics as well as a new novel.

Francoise sagan novel