Graceful and timeless - Rated 
It's hard to believe, now, that this book scandalised 1950s France. Seventeen year old Cécile, and her father Raymond epitomise the Beautiful People of the French Riviera: fun-loving and decadent, Raymond loves fast cars and attractive women and has taught his daughter to emulate his hedonistic lifestyle. This she does with an innocence impossible after the 1960s, stating of the one boy with whom she even flirts during the course of the book, "if Cyril had not been so fond of me I would have become his mistress that week." The picture is entirely charming, even if the lifestyle is now entirely gone.
And then, in the middle of one long summer, Raymond drops his current lover, the sunburned redhead Elsa, and proposes to marry Anne, an old friend. Cécile is appalled; her dreams of life with her father, of the balance of power between them gradually shifting in favour of her telling him her adventures, seem about to be shattered. She determines to stop the marriage, and forms a plan involving Cyril and Elsa pretending to become lovers right under Raymond's nose, trusting that good old fashioned jealousy will drive him to try to win back his erstwhile plaything.
I was expecting to be bored by this book, but needed something very thin to tuck into a pocket (it's just over a hundred pages). I thought that something which shocked France fifty years ago would be either insufferably tawdry, or just plain dull, but that in either case, morés would have changed so drastically in the intervening period, that the book would be all but incomprehensible.
In the event, what I found was a delicately graceful story which is almost timeless in its depiction of falling in love, growing up, growing older, passion and jealousy. Raymond's desire to stay young by bedding younger and younger women is of course only too familiar, but so is Anne's smart and efficient but somehow soulless respectability.
Cécile herself is perhaps the best thing about this book, the character of a teenager drawn with terrifying accuracy. Her relationship with Anne veers between a respect bordering on reverence, and a pathological desire to shock, and this - witness the drunk adolescent trying to be scandalous - will be the thing which keeps modern readers entertained, when implications of extra-marital sex have long lost their power to shock.
What does shock, though, is the ending. Until the last few pages, when the tragic consequences of Cécile's actions become clear, the plot has meandered through a course as languorous as the summer itself; I truly did not expect a moment of high drama. Naturally, through Cécile's eyes, this becomes melodrama, but still it left me stunned. It is, of course, a moral lesson that even the most innocent of meddlers may set in motion events they could not have foreseen, and this thought, too, is timeless.
Short and sweet - Rated 
Bonjour Tristesse tells the story of Cecile who is spending the summer on the French Riviere with her father and his girlfriend Elsa. The three are perfecly happy, indulging in a decadent lifestyle of drinking, dancing and sunbathing! Everything seems perfect, in Cecile's mind until an old freind of her mothers, Anne arrives to spend the rest of the summer with them and their carefree lifestyle begins to unravel.
This is a beautifully written book and extremely short, so can quite easily be read in one day. It is narrated by Cecile who becomes extremely manipulative towards those around her when Anne's presence fails to suit her. The book jacket describes Francoise Sagan as the French F Scott Fitzgerald, and their are definitely passages here reminiscent of The Great Gatsby.
This book is a great tale of a carefree adolescene who fails to acknowledge the consequences of her actions and wishes only to suit herself. All in all, a great read which transports you into the heart of a decadent French bourgeois family.
Fascinating but implausible - Rated
This review relates to the translation by Irene Ash for Penguin Books. Despite being a translation, this book is beautifully written. It is unconventional and the youthful protagonist has an interesting perspective on life. She is manipulative but also expresses doubts and remorse, which make her a more realistic character. However, the ending is unlikely. It is difficult to believe that the character named Anne would act in the way she is supposed to have done, bearing in mind the description that the author gives of her personality and approach to life. The book is nevertheless well worth reading, especially as it is so short.
A perfect book - Rated
First I should point out that I think the best translation of this book is the Penguin Classics one, if you can get hold of it. There are only small differences, but they make a great difference to the tone (ie, in the PC version, the word "sadness" is used, whilst in others its often "sorrow" - a subtle but significant difference in feeling!!) From the first line this book utterly captivated me. The narrator, Cecile, is manipulative and immoral, and yet you cannot fail to love her, which is why the book was seen as so scandalous at the time! After all, if she was easy to hate, then the story would be so different - horrible bad girl does bad things with bad consequences. Instead, this is a tale of actions and consequences, stupid decisions, irresponsibility but not of inherent badness or evil, and whilst everything that happens is Ceciles fault, you cannot help but feel utter sympathy for her. From the first line - "A strange and melancholy feeling pervades me which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sadness" - I was utterly hooked, fascinated and delighted! I could empathise utterly with the heroine, who was looking back with bittersweet nostalgia at a time which in spite of the great sorrow and pain caused, remains a beautiful and treasured memory. We all have a time we can think of - when a loved one was dying, or a relationship was endind - where we knew the end was in sight and were deeply unhappy and yet appreciated and enjoyed the time we had. It is the atmosphere of such time, and the pain and joy of such feelings which the author evokes in this story, which is expecially remarkable because of the authors youth when it was written (she was only 18). But then, it is doubtful that an older author could have made such a precocious, and on the face of it nasty character, so utterly loveable and three dimensional. This is the book I go to when times are terrible, or I am truly unhappy, to remind myself that though pain changed it remains and is important to who we are and what we become.
French Literary Classic - Rated
Forced to read Bonjour Tristesse in French for A Level, i found it incredibly difficult to understand the sub-plot and emotions, even though it was talked about in classes. I was stuck, and i had no hope of passing my A Level French without a good understanding of the novel. Although not suggested by the teacher to read the book in English, i thought it would be a good idea to understand the text, because in the exam, we were examined on the knowledge and understanding of the book rather than use of language. This book helped me pass the module and obtain a place at uni, simply because i understood the book and could write about it in french. I thouroughly enjoyed the book, and it shows Sagan at her best, without having to translate the text word by word. A beautiful romance novel, which is as shallow as me, and really makes me want to be part of the French Class society(!) YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK, and for this price, who could afford not to!
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