(2 of 2)
Plenty of Nothing. Author Sagan's prose is as disciplined as her characters are not. Her style is spare, lucid and psychologically astute. Yet her novel is a petition in spiritual and emotional bankruptcy. The word "nothing" recurs with obsessive frequency in describing what the heroine thinks and feels. Hemingway reduced the value problem of his "lost generation" to "What is moral is what you feel good after." Sagan has reduced hers to "What you feel is good, if you feel anything." Even the heroine's parting smile precedes a somewhat rueful summing up: "Well, what did it matter? I was a woman who had loved a man. It was a simple story." Being sad and wise and a little tired of it all in this continental way has a certain wayward charm. It seems to appeal so strongly to Françoise Sagan that she may never get around to striking any other pose.