The French female narrator, Cécile, seems to be intelligent and a bit immature. She explores her own first sensual and sentimental experience. The immorality and sensuality of the characters would seem less shocking today, but this is indeed a very daring and matter-of-fact account during a time when such things were unbecoming, especially amongst the […]
Posted in Blogs, Sagan | Tagged with Amorality, Debauchery, Promiscuity, sexuality, Teenagers
“Bonjour Tristesse”, or “Hello Sadness” in English, is a stable novella filled with romance and surface-level drama. The story is narrated by a young girl, Cecile, who is describing her summer vacation with her widowed father, Raymond, and his young girlfriend, Elsa. Her father, described as a charming or “playboy” type, ends up falling in …
Françoise Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse was a very fun read, but I quickly grew to have conflicting feelings about the main protagonist. In fact, many of Cécile’s thoughts and actions reminded me a lot of Blair Waldorf from the tv series, Gossip Girl (the one that first aired in 2007 – not to be confused with whatever mess […]
Posted in Blogs, Sagan | Tagged with gossipgirl
blog#6 – taming Chaos — The Duality of Cécile was by far the most captivating aspect of Bonjour Tristesse. Françoise Sagan’s ability to portray both a wild, cunning jealousy and guilt-ridden empathy and sorrow is what makes the book such an interesting read. The raw honesty and (at times, hesitant yet inevitable) introspection of Cécile’s own […]
Posted in Blogs, Sagan | Tagged with adolscent, chaos, daddy issues?, Drama, Envy, family, fate, french, funeral, gender, hindsight, mommy:mother, mother, Paris, spontaneity, stubbornness, teenage, wild child, Womanhood
This reading, by far, trumps Agostino in the genre of Oedipus complexes in the coming-of-age era. The relationship between Cecile and her father is much like the dynamic between Agostino and his mother in the sense that it felt like children raising children. The father did not care for Cecile’s education and let her go […]
Posted in Blogs, Sagan | Tagged with cliff, ego, irresponsibility, moravio, oedipus, plot
After reading Black Shack Alley, I really enjoyed this novel. I have read stories with similar themes like colonialism, supremacy, and poverty, but nothing like how the main character reconciles with these themes. At the beginning of the book, the main character is almost sort of naive to the idea of his grandparents and the […]
Posted in Blogs, Zobel | Tagged with Colonialism, influential, josé, juxtaposition, Martinique, narrator, poverty, protection, reality, Relationship
Zobel’s Black Shack Alley is a fascinating look into the impacts of colonialism throughout childhood in Martinique, and the racialization and trauma that comes with it. It seemed to me while I read that José did not frequently dwell on and confront notions of race, but it was clear that race and struggles with identity pervaded much […]
Posted in Blogs, Zobel | Tagged with Colonialism, identity, power, race
Reading ‘Bonjour Tristesse’ by Francoise Sagan went more quickly than I had expected. While the entire book spans months, I felt as if I were reading about one very long and eventful day. Perhaps this speaks to the “thoughtlessness” of our main…
Posted in Blogs, Sagan | Tagged with cycles, emotions, morals, relationships, sorrow, thoughtless, tristesse
Reading ‘Bonjour Tristesse’ by Francoise Sagan went more quickly than I had expected. While the entire book spans months, I felt as if I were reading about one very long and eventful day. Perhaps this speaks to the “thoughtlessness” of our main…
Posted in Blogs, Sagan | Tagged with cycles, emotions, morals, relationships, sorrow, thoughtless, tristesse
To begin with, I found Bonjour Tristesse to be quite an intriguing, if a bit desolate, read. Sagan’s descriptions, especially when he focuses on the French upper class in the beginning of the twentieth century has an almost lyrical, romantic feel to it. What caught my interest the most the more I read of the novel was […]
Posted in Blogs, Sagan | Tagged with emotions, feelings, literature, reflections, relationships
