Book Review : Bonjour Tristesse

Cecile spends her summer in a villa on the French Riviera with her widower father Raymond and his current mistress, Elsa.

Raymond has no apparent intellectual interests and does not care if Cecile studies for her exams or not. In the next villa is a young man called Cyril, with whom Cecile has a sexual romance.

Everything changes when Anne arrives, a principled, hard-working woman of Raymond’s age who was a friend of his late wife. Anne regards herself as a sort of godmother to Cecile and soon becomes Raymond’s lover, announcing their engagement to a startled Cecile.

Elsa moves out. Anne tries to take over parenting Cecile and tells her to stop seeing Cyril and get back to her schoolbooks. Cecile is horrified and devises a plan to prevent the marriage.

To make Raymond jealous, Cecile arranges for Elsa and Cyril to pretend to be a couple and appear together at certain times for maximum effect on Raymond, who predictably becomes jealous of the younger man.

Raymond renews his pursuit of Elsa. But Cecile has misjudged Anne’s sensitivity…

This is a superb story.