Before Françoise Sagan the literary icon there was Françoise Quoirez, an eighteen-year-old Parisian girl, who wrote a novel and needed a publisher for it.

1954. Françoise Sagan est une jeune fille de dix-huit ans comme les autres, ou presque. Le 15 mars, l’éditeur René Julliard publie le premier roman de Françoise Quoirez, dite Sagan, Bonjour tristesse, et tout change. Françoise devient riche et célèbre, noctambule et légendaire, culte et pourchassée. 2014. Romancière, Anne Berest se revêt « de la vie de Françoise pour oublier la sienne », et tisse sa jeune existence enlacée à celle de son aînée. Nous avons alors tout à la fois un roman, une biographie et une autofiction où, sous la plume merveilleuse d’Anne Berest, les vies de ces deux jeunes femmes n’en font plus qu’une. Et surtout, dans le miroir que vous tend le passé, le mythe Sagan rencontre l’éternelle jeunesse.

Set against the translucent beauty of France in summer, "Bonjour Tristesse" is a bittersweet tale narrated by Cé cile, a seventeen-year-old girl on the brink of womanhood, whose meddling in her father's love life leads to tragic consequences.Freed from boarding school, Cé cile lives in unchecked enjoyment with her youngish, widowed father -- an affectionate rogue, dissolute and promiscuous. Having accepted the constantly changing women in his life, Cé cile pursues a sexual conquest of her own with a "tall and almost beautiful" law student. Then, a new woman appears in her father's life. Feeling threatened but empowered, Cé cile sets in motion a devastating plan that claims a surprising victim.Deceptively simple in structure, "Bonjour Tristesse" is a complex and beautifully composed portrait of casual amorality and a young woman's desperate attempt to understand and control the world around her.

“Groskop skillfully juggles memoir, biography, philosophy, and literary criticism to create a delightful tour through some of French literature’s greats.” —Madeline Miller, New York Times–bestselling author Like many people the world over, Viv Groskop wishes she was a little more French. A writer, comedian, and journalist, Groskop studied the language obsessively starting at age 11, and spent every vacation in France, desperate to escape her Englishness and to have some French chic rub off on her. In Au Revoir, Tristesse, Groskop mixes literary history and memoir to explore how the classics of French literature can infuse our lives with joie de vivre and teach us how to say goodbye to sadness. From the frothy hedonism of Colette and the wit of Cyrano de Bergerac to the intoxicating universe of Marguerite Duras and the heady passions of Les Liaisons dangereuses, this is a love letter to great French writers. With chapters on Marcel Proust, Victor Hugo, Gustave Flaubert, Stendhal, Honoré de Balzac, Albert Camus, and of course Françoise Sagan, this is a delectable read for book lovers everywhere. “Ms. Groskop is a skilled raconteuse who brings people—and the page—to life. She writes with a self-deprecating appreciation of the Frenchman or -woman manqué(e) that lurks in us all. You don’t have to be a savant to enjoy this book . . . Au Revoir, Tristesse will make a witty, seductive companion.” —The Wall Street Journal “Groskop’s combination of her own memories, what the novels meant to her at different stages in her life, her description of the authors, along with her description of the novels, will have readers eagerly turning the book’s pages.” —Forbes

Set in Paris in the mid-1960s, Lucile, a young, rootless woman, finds herself torn between a fifty-year-old businessman and a thirty-year-old hot-blooded, impulsive editor; and, in a companion to the novel, the translator describes the process of rewritin