3.5/5
The cover -
Before I get anywhere, I just want to say how much I adore this cover. I find the shade of pinks, big close-together lettering, and the little bag of sparkling jewels all quite sexy. I even smelt it, imagining just for a moment that I'd pick up the seductive aroma of something like Chanel Coco Mademoiselle. Nope, it's more like dust and mud. Nevermind. As much as I do admire it, I wouldn't be seen dead reading the book out in public, unless it was hidden inside a newspaper. My masculinity might take a bit of a hit otherwise.
The pages inside -
Françoise Sagan has written of the younger woman being involved with the older man, but here in Salad Days she goes for the opposite. Here we get the toy boy lover. Best way I can sum up this novel is that it's something like if Georges Simenon was to try his hand at edgy romance.
There is a crime. And there is passion. There are nightclubs, and also fighting. And there is sexual jealousy. There is a neo-moorish love nest, which is semi furnished with art deco. And there is a well maintained garden, which might be of some interest to those with green fingers but not me.
Gueret is a young man whose job is number crunching at the local factory. Nicole, who also works there is his on-off-on girlfriend, or alternatively his friend with benefits. At the start of the novel he finds a cache of stolen jewels and would learn that a broker was killed over them. He has a thing for 1940s noir gangsters, and to impress his much older boardinghouse patronne Madame Biron (or Maria as she goes by once they start sleeping together) he plays the tough guy, but over a misunderstanding, she in fact thinks he is the killer. And I guess it turns her on. They start a relationship. She knows of someone from her murky days in Marseille (Gilbert) who will exchange quite a lot of money for the jewels, and the pair can make plans to sail off into the sunset. Or in this case, start a lumberyard business somewhere in the African Colonies. Gilbert though has other plans once he shows up later like Ray Liotta.
While their passion is all swell to begin with (she even rents an apartment in Lille for the two of them), Maria starts to wonder just what this younger man sees in her graying hair and wrinkly rump. She gets fed up with love-making quite easily, has had enough of men snoring beside her, wanting to just spread out on the bed all on her own, and would rather tend to her garden, fussing over her Pea shoots and whatnot. She even persuades Gueret to go back with Nicole saying she is younger and fresher and would moan with pleasure far more (which she does), and yet Maria still can't escape the fact of wanting to be with him. Nicole describes Maria as 'not exactly a fresh piece of goods', and thinks he's crazy for wanting to be with her. He wouldn't be the first to be crazy in love, and neither would she. The age difference by the way is about 25 years.
Despite what I thought was a rather predicable and whimsy finale, I did quite like this. I was worried it would be a bit like trashy chick-lit, but no, far from it. It's a novel built on hopes and dreams and disillusionment. Of glory days, and of nostalgia. And why there is no stopping two burning hearts, regardless of age, from being in love whatever the cost. Sagan might have been accomplished in drinking and racing her car, but she was also a very accomplished writer, who shouldn't be remembered simply for Bonjour Tristesse.