Question: What is this novel called?!

nonmerci — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:14:18 -0800

Please help me identify this French novel!

I'm filling in another stupid Facebook application involving the books you've read, are reading, etc. and suddenly remembered that I read a French (in French) novel last year around the fall. For the life of me I cannot remember the title OR the name of the author, though I'm sure if I were to see *either* I would recognize them.

Here is what I can remember: I believe the novel was written in the 1950s or 1960s, and while I don't think it was necessarily 'high literature' I believe the author was rather prolific (though I could be wrong). I'm also fairly sure the author was a woman. It was a sort of roman d'apprentissage, or coming-of-age tale, involving a young woman at a summer house on the beach where she was staying with her father and...step-mother? It could have been the other way around, as in mother and step-father, but I don't believe so. One of her parents was dead, I'm almost positive.

She meets a young man who lives in a house nearby, they fall in love and begin to meet secretly where they have a sexual relationship (though I believe she is only 15 or 16 and he is perhaps 20). The father finds out and she is forbidden to see him.

After that, details get hazy. I recall her being frustrated and angry for most of the novel and I believe it ends with SOMEONE dying in a car accident. Her father, perhaps. I honestly don't remember.

I bought the novel second-hand at a bookstore in Berkeley...please help me remember what the hell it's called! I tried searching the keywoards I can remember on google.fr but for some reason TRANSLATIONS OF TRUMAN CAPOTE are the number one results.

Thanks, HiveMind!

By: runincircles

runincircles — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:25:35 -0800

It's Bonjour Tristesse, by Francoise Sagan. Think she was mates with Capote, maybe he first translated it. Love that book.

By: nonmerci

nonmerci — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:45:58 -0800

You are a goddess among women. Thanks!

By: Wolof

Wolof — Fri, 16 May 2008 03:42:43 -0800

The film by Otto Preminger with Jean Seberg is not bad either.

Comments on: What is this novel called?!

Question: What is this novel called?!

By: runincircles

By: nonmerci

By: Wolof