Love, Actually...

A Certain Smile -Françoise Sagan [trans. Anne Green]

        While Dominique is only twenty, she has a fairly good life.  She's pretty, is a law student at the Sorbonne, lives in Paris [much to my own personal envy], and has her first lover, her boyfriend Bertrand.  Bertrand takes her to meet his Aunt Françoise and Uncle Luc who almost instantly take a liking to her.  Dominique and Luc especially seem to have a bond ad attraction between each other and Luc invites the younger Dominique to meet him for lunch later on.

       This is Sagan's sophomore novel, after her first novel, the coming-of-age Bonjour Tristesse.  Written in only two months, A Certain Smile is a short work at only 128 pages; however, is full of development.  This is a wonderfully written story


       I know that there is a film version of this made in the 1950's; however, as I read this story, quite often I pictured Dominique looking like Odile (Anna Karina) from Jean-Luc Godard's 1964 classic film, Band of Outsiders (Bande à part).  Which gives an excuse to share one of the more famous clips from the film: "The Madison"




As for the book, if you liked Bonjour Tristesse, I think you'll equally like A Certain Smile.  I think I may actually like it more so and definitely recommend it.


Rating: 5 of 5.