A Certain Smile

Women want to be needed; men want conquest. Once they achieve their goals, they need to repeat. Some need physical touch to prove their worth; for others, flirting reinforces those original goals. Always, always, always, the human condition is to want more, more, more . . . . This would tend to get complicated, except jealousy also exists to cleanse our passions of spent passions. Early in the book Luc explains to Dominique " . . . to love and to be loved were essential to being happy." She's bored with her life as a university student, which has become an endless routine of study and exams; she's bored with her lover, a fellow student and their endless routine of bed and banter. Then, like a bolt of lightning, her ability to interest a successful handsome well-married businessman proves intoxicating, alluring, and seductive. It's a masterful story by Sagan. There are so many women who can sympathize with her description of her student lover, " . . . it was quite natural that I should have the weight of Bertrand's body on mine . . . and that we should be happy together." Somehow, she expected more than the equivalent of lying under a rumbled sack of restless potatoes. It was a dream romance for her, running away to Cannes in Luc's convertible, tender and gentle and new and exciting, until he ordered her to "come along to bed." They shared two weeks of bedtime; and, for this poor girl from the countryside, it was a wonderful rich vacation that could never be repeated. It was a love affair, with typical French panache and vacant meaning; she sought meaning in her life, and found only emptiness and futility. Her legs were open, her heart was closed. The music of jazz, she discovers, ". . . is a form of accelerated unconcern." As she idly drifts into an affair with Luc, being very careful not to upset his wife of whom she is very fond, she realizes she was "trapped, that was it!" Her only calming thought was the feeling ". . . I was going to have a baby, and the certainty was actually claming." No such fear. There's no baby, no abortion. This one thought that she might have a baby -- a baby who would need her -- passes briefly and she returns to the futile search for a grown man who would want her with the same need as a baby. By the end, with her life empty of everyone who had been present at the beginning of the story, Dominique realizes "I was a woman who had loved a man. It was a simple story." It was over. For the French, fun in a bedroom is boring. It's definitely not a "romance" novel. Those are an American idea, the idea one can find soul-filling happiness in glorious, sweeping and wildly passionate love. The French idea is that life is a tragedy, and Sagan expresses this pessimism with skill.

Francoise Sagan's sublime second outing captures the essence of love. It is the tale of Dominique, a young French woman, who's honest assessment of her life leads to the realisation that feelings for her current boyfriend are only that of fondness, not love. An encounter with her boyfriend's uncle unfolds into new love, friendships and understanding. A beautiful, somewhat sad piece, with the flowing charm of Sagan's previous work, Bonjour Tristesse. Perceptive and enchanting, Mlle Sagan has produced a book that has captured, as well as anyone ever has, love through the eyes of youth.