Bonjour Tristesse on the radio

I got lost in the BBC Radio archive and found Jon Snow. He'd picked the novel as his favourite book in a Good Read episode in 2006 and first read it as a boy of about 16 because "I wanted to know what women thought, what those sort of women; liberated, French women, thought...It's both naive and sophisticated, her observations of relationships is really acute" Christopher Frayling noted that it was "much more self aware and much more to do with characters than I'd remembered" but Sue MacGregor wasn't joining in the praise; "My problem with the book is that I didn't like Cécile at all, I'm afraid". Frayling enthused about Cécile discussing Bergson, Pascale and Kant over dinner, adding that although she was lazy, "she still understands the ideas and tries to map them onto her everyday life." Both Snow and Frayling were impressed and 'astonished' by Sagan's perceptive observations of character, particularly given her age.

Six years earlier, Louise Doughty, chose it too, also on a A Good Read. Her guests were historian Lyn Macdonald and neurobiologist Sir Colin Blakemore. Macdonald had read it as a teenager when it came out, and found that by re-reading it as an adult, her opinion about it had changed. There was more depth than she had originally thought, and it was now a book about 'youthful confusion', as Cécile was "jealous of her father’s relationship with Anne because Anne had taken her under her wing, before, in an earlier time and taught her how to dress and she admired her, but she doesn’t know that herself". This aspect of Cécile being more 'in love' with Anne, as a mother figure, is not that familiar, (the potentially incestuous relationship with her father is a much popular rhetoric) but Cryptic Theatre make much of this. In the book, Cécile describes Anne as 'my first love'. Blakemore is reminded of Jane Austen, because 'the essential thread in this novel is about relationships' and makes an interesting point that "there’s something that may have been lost in the British or American novel in that respect, the interest in exploring for its own sake, the development of relationships and how they impact on emotion." I would agree that contemporary British films too, have also lost some of this focus on relationships, (not sure they ever really had it, though) in favour of adhering to a classical 3-Act structure.

Journalist Rachel Cooke, in an episode of 'Reader, I wore it', strongly identified with Cécile, when she read the book as a 14 year old, lying in a cornfield in France, not because she was anything like the character, but "I recognised her conundrum which had mostly to do with her papa, and for this reason, I felt close to her. So close in fact that I returned home determined to appropriate just a little of her French chic for myself"

Finding little description of what Cécile actually wore in the book itself, Cooke used a photo of Sagan on the back cover, merging the two, Cécile and Sagan, and later with Seberg too; combining elements of all three to form this stylish picture on which to create a series of outfits to outwardly convey this 50's French chic. It's a kind of Cecile/Sagan/Seberg appropriation, which is hard to disentangle, but easy to assimilate.

Front Row Mark Lawson talks to Jean Seberg's biographer, Garry McGee, about her tragic life, and suspicious death. A political activist and supporter of the Black Panther movement, Seberg became the subject of an investigation by the FBI. Although her death at the age of 40 is recorded as suicide, there are doubts..."how did this huge amount of alcohol end up in her system? That's something that the coroner could not explain. And another thing too, with her missing for several days...she was found a block and a half from her apartment, so that's a big question as well."