The four corners of the heart An unfinished novel

Françoise Sagan, 1935-2004

Book - 2023

"French literary star Françoise Sagan was just eighteen when she published her first bestseller, Bonjour Tristesse, in 1954. Decades later, this short novel surfaced: an unfinished manuscript that wittily dissects the romantic lives of its bourgeois characters. The glamourous Marie-Laure never expected her wealthy older husband to survive a devastating car accident that left him in a fragile mental and physical condition. But three years later, Ludovic Cresson returns home to the family estate and finds himself in the throes of a tumultuous marriage. Overseeing this tense dynamic is Henri, the patriarch, who wants to see his son recover but detests various members of his own family. When Marie-Laure's mother visits the estate, th...e family equilibrium falters spectacularly. As Ludovic's virility returns, he cannot resist the charms of his mother-in-law--and neither can his father. The story ends abruptly, but it offers a vivid, if open-ended, look into some of Sagan's final undiscovered characters"-- more