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I read this novel, which translates as “Hello Sadness” over 30 years ago and I chose it this time because it’s set in the summer in the South of France and I thought it would remind us of those foreign summer holidays we are missing at the moment! I had forgotten quite how tragically the novel ends........ but the title does hint at a sad outcome.
When I first read it, it reminded me of a holiday to the South of France when I was 16. It was my first foreign holiday and we drove to Saint Tropez and stayed in a static caravan for two weeks. I remember visiting Frejus which is mentioned in the novel. The descriptions of the heat, the beautiful beaches, the wealth on display all brought memories of that holiday back to me.
My holiday and Cecile’s couldn’t have been more different though. The narrative is written in the first person and the events unfold through the eyes of precocious 17 year old Cecile who is on holiday from Paris with her 40 year old father, Raymond, a widower of 15 years and serial philanderer. With permission from Cecile, he has brought along his latest mistress, Elsa, who is much younger than him, beautiful, superficial but no threat to Cecile’s close relationship with her father. The setting is a beautiful villa with its own private beach and woodland behind.
Not long into the holiday, an old friend, Anne, comes to stay with very little warning. She had been a friend to Cecile’s mother, Raymond’s wife, and is the same age as him, beautiful, cultured and intelligent and to Cecile’s surprise she and her husband begin an affair very quickly and Elsa is humiliated and dropped by Raymond.
By the time Anne appears on the scene, Cecile has met Cyril, a handsome young law student who is staying with his mother in the next villa along the coast and sails into their cove regularly. She begins a flirtation with Cyril which develops as the novel progresses.
From the very beginning we are told by Cecile that “my love of pleasure seems to be the only coherent side of my character” and that her father’s “only fault was to imbue me with a cynical attitude towards love, which, considering my age and experience, should have meant happiness and not only a transitory sensation. I was fond of repeating to myself sayings like Oscar Wilde’s:
"Sin is the only note of vivid colour that persists in the modern world. I believed that I could base my life on it”.
The lack of a maternal figure in her life and the example set to Cecile by her father over the previous two years since she left boarding school have left a very damaging legacy. Raymond has encouraged her to think that she doesn’t need to bother much with her studies as she will find a man to look after her and that beauty is skin deep and superficial good looks are the most important thing in life. He has allowed her to spend a lot of time socialising with his circle of hedonistic friends instead of young people her own age and the results of this on her young mind play out in the unfolding drama causing dissent between Cecile and Anne, who has different ideas about how to parent her.
Little wonder then that Cecile is a complex and confused teenager and has become a scheming and manipulative young woman. She decides she cannot contemplate her father marrying Anne, despite knowing that she will bring goodness and stability to their lives. She coerces her boyfriend Cyril who has been shocked by Raymond’s behaviour from the start and the gilted lover, Elsa, to pretend to be lovers to make her father jealous and cause a rift between him and Anne. Cyril has been shocked from the start at Raymond’s behaviour – on page 16 he says “Look at the example of your father and that woman! I might be the most awful cad for all you know”.
The intrigue results in Anne seeing Raymond and Elsa together and driving off in tears, plunging over a cliff to her death in what is probably a suicide. Cecile in her belief that love was a transitory sensation, had not understood the depth of Anne’s love for Raymond and the betrayal she would feel. There are many times when she considers abandoning her plan because of her fondness for Anne but seems to be in a state of confusion and allows things to go too far.
Cecile never admits to her father that her scheming has brought about the chain of events and they return to their old way of life but she has to live with that knowledge. The novel begins with the opening sentence “A strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sadness”.
Francoise Sagan wrote the novel when she was only 18. It was published in 1954 and became an “overnight sensation”, paving the way for the permissive society. According to the Daily Telegraph it was “One of the literary sensations of the century”.
Another review
On the face of it a story of an adolescent emerging from the chrysalis of wondering who she is into the reality of becoming a young woman. But this young adolescent had emerged at 15 from the confines of her convent education into the thoroughly hurly-burly amoral world of her father and treated as a conspirator, and in her mind therefore an equal, in the games that he played. At 17 Cecile had become completely submerged into this world, where gratification was seen to be the be-all and end-all of living.
The arrival onto the scene of Anne, a good friend of Cecile’s deceased mother, provides the catalyst for Cecile’s gradual awareness of sensibility and, to some extent, empathy. This, in turn, results in Cecile becoming much more akin to an adolescent I would understand in today’s world. Confused, conflicted, frustrated, lonely, and needing desperately to understand herself. Unfortunately, for Cecile, her father and Anne, Cecile is unable to relate to any moral compass to help her navigate her way through the quagmire of her father and Anne’s proposed marriage. She has no boundaries and little understanding of how she feels. She is able to recognize the frivolity and shallowness of the life she and her father have been living for the past 2 years, but is unwilling to give it up. Cecile knows that both she and her father need stability and order in their lives, but she is not prepared to allow herself the hope of this possibility within the proposed marriage. Her anger at being steamrolled into a new situation which she can see will be turning her life upside down, and asking her to grow differently is something anathema to her. So she uses all her skill and imagination to ensure that the marriage never happens.
I felt irritated reading this at times. The superficiality of the life portrayed really got on my nerves, and the narcissism of both Cecile and Raymond I found hard to cope with, which I guess is a tribute to the writing inasmuch as I so wanted them both to grow up and become whole people. I can see why this was such a tour de force for Francoise Sagan because for an 18-year old to be so self-aware and write such a concise history of the conflict adolescents have is quite extraordinary. Her understanding of Anne as well is quite remarkable. The misunderstanding that Cecile has of Anne’s heart is very apposite in terms of teenagers and their older parents and families, and Francoise has captured that really well. The scenic south of France is very well portrayed and the sun, sea and sand illuminates the pages throughout the story. It feels very French in both landscape and attitude.
I do wonder if there is any biographical link between Francoise and Cecile. It seems strange that she never seem to capture the same intensity in her later writing.
When I first read it, it reminded me of a holiday to the South of France when I was 16. It was my first foreign holiday and we drove to Saint Tropez and stayed in a static caravan for two weeks. I remember visiting Frejus which is mentioned in the novel. The descriptions of the heat, the beautiful beaches, the wealth on display all brought memories of that holiday back to me.
My holiday and Cecile’s couldn’t have been more different though. The narrative is written in the first person and the events unfold through the eyes of precocious 17 year old Cecile who is on holiday from Paris with her 40 year old father, Raymond, a widower of 15 years and serial philanderer. With permission from Cecile, he has brought along his latest mistress, Elsa, who is much younger than him, beautiful, superficial but no threat to Cecile’s close relationship with her father. The setting is a beautiful villa with its own private beach and woodland behind.
Not long into the holiday, an old friend, Anne, comes to stay with very little warning. She had been a friend to Cecile’s mother, Raymond’s wife, and is the same age as him, beautiful, cultured and intelligent and to Cecile’s surprise she and her husband begin an affair very quickly and Elsa is humiliated and dropped by Raymond.
By the time Anne appears on the scene, Cecile has met Cyril, a handsome young law student who is staying with his mother in the next villa along the coast and sails into their cove regularly. She begins a flirtation with Cyril which develops as the novel progresses.
From the very beginning we are told by Cecile that “my love of pleasure seems to be the only coherent side of my character” and that her father’s “only fault was to imbue me with a cynical attitude towards love, which, considering my age and experience, should have meant happiness and not only a transitory sensation. I was fond of repeating to myself sayings like Oscar Wilde’s:
"Sin is the only note of vivid colour that persists in the modern world. I believed that I could base my life on it”.
The lack of a maternal figure in her life and the example set to Cecile by her father over the previous two years since she left boarding school have left a very damaging legacy. Raymond has encouraged her to think that she doesn’t need to bother much with her studies as she will find a man to look after her and that beauty is skin deep and superficial good looks are the most important thing in life. He has allowed her to spend a lot of time socialising with his circle of hedonistic friends instead of young people her own age and the results of this on her young mind play out in the unfolding drama causing dissent between Cecile and Anne, who has different ideas about how to parent her.
Little wonder then that Cecile is a complex and confused teenager and has become a scheming and manipulative young woman. She decides she cannot contemplate her father marrying Anne, despite knowing that she will bring goodness and stability to their lives. She coerces her boyfriend Cyril who has been shocked by Raymond’s behaviour from the start and the gilted lover, Elsa, to pretend to be lovers to make her father jealous and cause a rift between him and Anne. Cyril has been shocked from the start at Raymond’s behaviour – on page 16 he says “Look at the example of your father and that woman! I might be the most awful cad for all you know”.
The intrigue results in Anne seeing Raymond and Elsa together and driving off in tears, plunging over a cliff to her death in what is probably a suicide. Cecile in her belief that love was a transitory sensation, had not understood the depth of Anne’s love for Raymond and the betrayal she would feel. There are many times when she considers abandoning her plan because of her fondness for Anne but seems to be in a state of confusion and allows things to go too far.
Cecile never admits to her father that her scheming has brought about the chain of events and they return to their old way of life but she has to live with that knowledge. The novel begins with the opening sentence “A strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sadness”.
Francoise Sagan wrote the novel when she was only 18. It was published in 1954 and became an “overnight sensation”, paving the way for the permissive society. According to the Daily Telegraph it was “One of the literary sensations of the century”.
Another review
On the face of it a story of an adolescent emerging from the chrysalis of wondering who she is into the reality of becoming a young woman. But this young adolescent had emerged at 15 from the confines of her convent education into the thoroughly hurly-burly amoral world of her father and treated as a conspirator, and in her mind therefore an equal, in the games that he played. At 17 Cecile had become completely submerged into this world, where gratification was seen to be the be-all and end-all of living.
The arrival onto the scene of Anne, a good friend of Cecile’s deceased mother, provides the catalyst for Cecile’s gradual awareness of sensibility and, to some extent, empathy. This, in turn, results in Cecile becoming much more akin to an adolescent I would understand in today’s world. Confused, conflicted, frustrated, lonely, and needing desperately to understand herself. Unfortunately, for Cecile, her father and Anne, Cecile is unable to relate to any moral compass to help her navigate her way through the quagmire of her father and Anne’s proposed marriage. She has no boundaries and little understanding of how she feels. She is able to recognize the frivolity and shallowness of the life she and her father have been living for the past 2 years, but is unwilling to give it up. Cecile knows that both she and her father need stability and order in their lives, but she is not prepared to allow herself the hope of this possibility within the proposed marriage. Her anger at being steamrolled into a new situation which she can see will be turning her life upside down, and asking her to grow differently is something anathema to her. So she uses all her skill and imagination to ensure that the marriage never happens.
I felt irritated reading this at times. The superficiality of the life portrayed really got on my nerves, and the narcissism of both Cecile and Raymond I found hard to cope with, which I guess is a tribute to the writing inasmuch as I so wanted them both to grow up and become whole people. I can see why this was such a tour de force for Francoise Sagan because for an 18-year old to be so self-aware and write such a concise history of the conflict adolescents have is quite extraordinary. Her understanding of Anne as well is quite remarkable. The misunderstanding that Cecile has of Anne’s heart is very apposite in terms of teenagers and their older parents and families, and Francoise has captured that really well. The scenic south of France is very well portrayed and the sun, sea and sand illuminates the pages throughout the story. It feels very French in both landscape and attitude.
I do wonder if there is any biographical link between Francoise and Cecile. It seems strange that she never seem to capture the same intensity in her later writing.