Sagan, Françoise

(French, 1935– )

Sagan has written a number of plays as well as several novels. Her first novel, Bonjour Tristesse (1954), published when Sagan was just 19, explores the inner world of a teenage girl as she begins to experience sexual desire. Sagan's style is minimalist, using everyday speech, and may appear to be simple. Yet it enables the reader to recognize the deep-seated emotions and desires that lie behind everyday actions and conventions. Many of her novels are concerned with the ways in which middle-class life constrains the expression of love, particularly for women. In Aimez-vous Brahms (1966) for example, the heroine is torn between a stable yet unfulfilling and a passionate yet unstable relationship. In Wonderful Clouds (1961), Sagan explores the powerful use of emotional blackmail by a young American who is obsessively jealous of his Parisian wife.

Colette, Amy Bloom, Marguerite Duras  DJ