Il est des moments dans la vie où un rien suffit à faire basculer le destin, où pour moins que rien, un regard, un mot, un paysage, l'homme tranquille se dégoûte soudain de sa tranquillité, la femme fatale rencontre la fatalité, celui qui va tuer se détourne de sa vengeance, celle qui était décidée à quitter son l'amant l'épouse. Il y a, dans ces dix-neuf récits de Françoise Sagan, une douceur amère qui prend au cœur. Douceur d'autant plus angoissante que les personnages mis en cause sont presque tous des gens comblés. Non pas de ces hommes et de ces femmes qui se prêtent à une pitié facile, mais de ceux qu'on envie pour leur apparent bonheur. D'un doigt léger, sans avoir l'air d'y toucher, Françoise Sagan gratte cette apparence, cette croûte, l'arrache, et voici devant nous, fragiles, inquiets, des gens comme tout le monde, et si seuls. Car c'est la solitude qui relie entre eux ces récits, pèse sur chacun d'eux. Une solitude que parfois, d'une pirouette, l'auteur attrape pour l'épingler au mur et nous la donner à contempler, dans un sourire. Et ce sourire, c'est la détente, la note de charme, une façon de laisser entendre que la vie et les hommes, au fond, ce n'est pas si sérieux... Des yeux de soie qui caressent et rassurent, mais quel désespoir cachent-ils ?
Table : - Des yeux de soie - Le gigolo - L'homme étendu - L'inconnue - Les cinq distractions - L'arbre gentleman - Une soirée - La diva - Une mort snob - La partie de pêche - La mort en espadrilles - La paupière de gauche - Une nuit de chien - La rupture romaine - Le café du coin - La piqure de sept heures - Le ciel d'Italie - Le soleil se couche aussi - L'étang de solitude
Born Françoise Quoirez, Sagan grew up in a French Catholic, bourgeois family. She was an independent thinker and avid reader as a young girl, and upon failing her examinations for continuing at the Sorbonne, she became a writer.
She went to her family's home in the south of France and wrote her first novel, Bonjour Tristesse, at age 18. She submitted it to Editions Juillard in January 1954 and it was published that March. Later that year, She won the Prix des Critiques for Bonjour Tristesse.
She chose "Sagan" as her pen name because she liked the sound of it and also liked the reference to the Prince and Princesse de Sagan, 19th century Parisians, who are said to be the basis of some of Marcel Proust's characters.
She was known for her love of drinking, gambling, and fast driving. Her habit of driving fast was moderated after a serious car accident in 1957 involving her Aston Martin while she was living in Milly, France.
Sagan was twice married and divorced, and subsequently maintained several long-term lesbian relationships. First married in 1958 to Guy Schoeller, a publisher, they divorced in 1960, and she was then married to Robert James Westhoff, an American ceramicist and sculptor, from 1962 to 63. She had one son, Denis, from her second marriage.
She won the Prix de Monaco in 1984 in recognition of all of her work.
Not since W. Somerset Maugham has a writer given me such pleasure. Sagan's stories may be shorter. Eighteen of them fit into 137 pages. Yet, each one is a world in itself.
Unless the rich, the south of France, hunting parties, and gigolos are your daily norm, there is escapism on every page. But as with the expat lives in Maugham's short stories, the reality behind all that gloss will make you happy to return home again.
Like all good writers, Sagan reminds us what matters. It's not our income, an address or label on our clothes. How we conduct our lives is what makes us who we are. And fragility, like strength, is common to us all. Her skill as a writer is that I cared about her characters. An unlikely bunch to draw on my heartstrings as I could have ever imagined.
For most people, Françoise Sagan will always be remembered for her 1954 novel Bonjour Tristesse. A work that gained her international recognition. It's shame after that success that most of her other written works got somewhat overlooked. Even I was surprised to discover just how many other novels she wrote in her lifetime, plus she also wrote in the short story format.
Silken Eyes: And Other Stories is a collection of eighteen stories in under two-hundred pages, so it goes without saying that most are on the very short side, apart from about three or four of them. They take place in countries such as France, Britain, Germany, and America, and do generally follow the same path of love gone bad. Most were harsh and chilly, so no sugary or soppy tales here. Her writing was impressive in parts and average in others. The opener: Silken eyes, one of the longest, sets the scene for what is to follow. Other stories I liked were 'The Gigolo' 'A Stylish Death' 'The Left Eyelid' and 'Italian Skies'. The very short stories didn't really sink in, so on the whole three stars is about right.
Handsomely written from the era of 1975. Especially touched with stories that shows ordinary scenes from everyday lives. A clipped scene from our lives, if written by someone like Sagan, could be a masterpiece.
Françoise Sagan’s novels have often been belittled by supposedly serious (and mostly male) critics, but they’ve actually stood the test of time despite the predictions of those snubbers, and her best books remain literary gems that auscultate with style, elegance, and an acute sense of observation, the shallowness and emotional chaos of France’s bourgeois society as it enjoys new found freedom after WWII. "Des yeux de soie" (which means “Silk Eyes”) is a collection of stories. Almost all of them deal with breakups – there is actual breaking up, the possibility of breaking up, the dreaming of breaking up, the aftermath of breaking up (or of not breaking up). If those stories are uneven – some are a bit sloppily written, why others shine with psychological intelligence and a refined style – they are all extremely entertaining, and they all dissect beautiful creatures of high society as if they were pathetic insects, with a sense of cruelty and a welcome dose of humor that give real power to tales where not necessarily much happens. Sagan has a deep understanding of this privileged world she writes about, and if she somehow has some compassion for it – and especially for its women – she’s too well aware of its faults and its moral void to be sentimental about it. Yet, she never becomes moralizing – which would be a terrible bore – and she doesn’t condemn her characters for what they do or don’t do. She just looks at them with a mixture of amusement, tenderness, and graceful savagery, the same way she actually looked at herself in real life. Farce and tragedy are never far apart, in Sagan’s world. The distinction is sometimes blurry. Many of Sagan’s stories find a perfect balance between these two angles, and that gives this collection much more depth and emotional truth than one could have expected.
I really loved this stories. They are sharp, sad, entertaining, smart and I also enjoyed the writing. Sagan writes about human relationships, mostly romantic ones (or actually not so often really romantic) in a bittersweet way and she only needs a few pages to make the point. These stories can sometimes blur into each other a bit, because of the main topic she writes about, but I was never bored by that. Only with two stories of nineteen I couldn't really figure out why they had found there way into this collection. This is my third book by this author, I rated two of her novels with four stars before, so I will definitely read more of her work.
"Razonamiento lógico, ya que había tenido una vida agitada; y es que toda vida agitada sueña con calma, con infancia y con rododendros, lo mismo que toda vida tranquila sueña con vodka, con músicas ruidosas y con perversidad."
A good mix of stories. Simple, straightforward. At points I felt I was heading towards to falling out of love with her as an author. But why go from infatuation to disrepute? There are some nice redeeming features here. It made for enjoyable light reading on the train - and allowed me to reflect on and put into perspective challenges within my own relationships.
There were at least two stories about people on their way to break up with their lover, only to reverse course at the last minute. There were a fair number of stories that spoke to the prison of living one's life according to social expectation. These themes she handled relatively well.
Yet in her books she manages to tease out more philosophical complications and depth on questions of interpersonal relations: specifically individual selfishness and collective expectations and their consequences. In longer format, her ideas have more space to breathe and she has time to tease out the complexity and nuance while building up narrative tension. In her longer stories the sense of drama is earned and credible. In these shorter pieces it can lean more into feeling like a trick, or lack moral weight or seriousness.
I think there are three stories where she tackles the subject of death head-on, and a number of others where it is worked in. Also included are more than a couple where she takes on otherwise successful if superficial people having moments of emotional crises at midlife, crises that they themselves cannot understand or explain to themselves. These were less well handled for the reasons above, and the intended punches just didn't land.
Finally, I can't say I agree with her obsession with upper class European types. I am quite frankly tired of cultural products about the lives of rich people, as if nobody else is worthy of having their story told.
-- Highlights:
"It was strange, when you came to think of it, how all those men who had loved her so much, who had all been so proud of her and so jealous, had never, in the end, resented her deserting them; they had all remained her friends. She congratulated herself on this, but it may have been that, at heart, they had all felt a certain relief at no longer having to share her perpetual state of indecision. As Arthur Connolly, one of her richest lovers, used to say: 'one could no more leave Letitia than she could leave you.'" Page 84, The Left Eyelid
"It was always the men who didn't attract her in the least who had pointed out the prominence of the Mount of Venus in her palm, and hence her sensuality. It was always the men who bored her who had told her how amusing she was, and, saddest of all, it was always the men she had loved who had told her how selfish she was." Page 87, The Left Eyelid
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
In this short story collection, Sagan’s personal style is strikingly distinctive—middle-class men and women who appear lively and outgoing in public, but are inwardly lonely and desolate, yearning to leave a relationship or start anew. Their detachment from relationships often symbolizes a broader sense of giving up on life itself. The themes may sound either superficial or unbearably heavy—an empty rich woman wanting a breakup, a man in midlife crisis discovering his wife’s affair with his friend, a selfish woman choosing to end her life… Yet Sagan’s signature lightness gives these self-destructive characters’ tales of clear-headed decline an unexpectedly readable charm. This lightness comes from moments of “comic relief”: a socialite accidentally gets locked in a chaotic train’s bathroom while reapplying her makeup; a woman trying to move on from heartbreak rides a horse only to end up repeating the exact fate of her ex-husband; a man mistaken for a homeless person ends up getting everything he wanted… This irony brings a kind of effortless theatricality that aligns with Sagan’s own life philosophy—to live freely and true to one’s nature, even if that means suffering. I believe if Sagan heard today’s internet phrase “the world is just a makeshift troupe,” she’d totally agree. The one about a woman staring at the pond as if staring at the endless depth of loneliness and the one about the man who gives up shooting the antelope are both excellent. Interestingly, most readers interpret the ending of the antelope story as the female protagonist saying: even if the man had bravely brought back the prey, she still wouldn’t have loved him. But I’d like to offer a more optimistic, warmer reading: his wife’s affair devastated his sense of masculinity, and his disappointment in himself was displaced onto her, which then got redirected into a desire to eliminate his romantic rival, which further transformed into a desire to shoot the antelope. Not killing the antelope may be, at a subconscious level, a sign of lingering forgiveness, understanding, and love for his wife—and an acknowledgment of his own failure. That might be a form of resignation, a “this is who I am, broken and all,” but is it possible that a wife who feels understood might actually fall back in love with this man, who no longer clings to a rigid sense of masculinity? Perhaps what she meant to say was: whether or not you brought back the antelope, I will always love you. Whether the ending feels despairing or hopeful—the choice is left to the wounded reader, just like cynicism and wild joy are two sides of the same coin named freedom.
El libro contiene 19 relatos. El primero, Ojos de seda, trata de la relación de una pareja muy acomodada que sale de caza el fin de semana con otra pareja de amigos. Jerome descubre que su mujer Monika mantiene una relación con su amigo el conquistador Stanislas porque, en un descuido, mientras viajan en el auto éste lleva su mano sobre la mano de Monika, quien ha preferido irse en el asiento de atrás junto al invitado. Jerome decide matarlo durante la cacería, pero no es capaz. El desenlace queda sintetizado en un gesto sutil que le hace Monika cuando lo tiene de vuelta después de la cacería. Esto hace que Jerome desista de sus planes.
I usually love Sagan. Her language is elegant, soft and viciously cruel all at once.
But I was a little disappointed by this collection of short stories. They all melt into one and the overall impression is of something quite forgettable.
I wouldn't advise starting to read Sagan with this book unless French isn't your native tongue and you're worried you won't have the energy for a full novel. Books like La Laisse and Aimez-vous Brahms are quite short and they are more indicative of her ferocious wit.
J'ai lu sans vraiment écouter. Il est peu probable que la lecture de cette succession de tout petits récits de gens pas beaucoup plus grands me marque. Je lui prédis la fugacité des récits que l'on imagine en regardant passer les riverains, en leur inventant des histoires (luxueuses et inconséquentes) assis à une terrasse du XVIème arrondissement. Pour sa défense, je suis persuadée que si je ne travaillais pas dans le luxe, je serais plus réceptive.
Sagan has yet to disappoint. Here she turns her deft, subtle hands to some mostly very short stories. They have already disappeared into book memory heaven but that doesn't mean that while you are immersed in her characters they won't amuse or get you thinking about human foibles.
I picked this up having enjoyed Sagan's best known work, Bonjour Tristesse, but this flat, uninteresting collection of short stories really aren't in the same league. A collection of tales filled the one dimensional rich, with rather uninspiring, clumsy twists - almost nothing of interest here tbh
I should have known the stories would be a bit too short for me (18 stories in 144 pages?). But my favourites were The Five Diversions, The Left Eyelid and Italian Skies.
J'apprécie les formats courts. Certaines histoires m’ont fait sourire, mais la plupart sont assez infintile. Enigmatiques et intéressantes au commencement mais assez prévisible.
J’ai beaucoup aimé l’histoire à propos de la femme qui reste enfermé dans les toilettes du trains le plus luxueux de la sncf, en route vers Lyon-Perrache pour rompre avec son amant.