Noel’s Reviews > Bonjour tristesse > Status Update
Noel
is finished
At last 🥳 Surprisingly, I had a much easier time reading this than I did reading Le Petit Prince last year. But then, I was at A2 and I think that book is really B1. This book is definitely B2, so it really was “comprehensible input.” What shook me up the most was Sagan’s use of the imperfect subjunctive (“la seule que je possédasse…”) and the past perfect subjunctive(?) (“il m’eût rassurée…”). The latter…
— 17 hours, 50 min ago
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Noel’s Previous Updates
Noel
is on page 73 of 154
Deuxième partie. Have the next two days off so will focus on finishing it then. (The last part ended on a very tense note; it’s remarkable that an eighteen-year-old could depict such complicated relationships between her characters.)
— Aug 03, 2026 05:02PM
Noel
is on page 47 of 154
Hm, “smoking” is French for tuxedo. (And apparently Italian, Portuguese, German, Polish, Russian, etc., because of its similarly to Victorian smoking jackets.) (“Je le retrouvai en bas, étincelant dans un smoking neuf, et lui mis le bras autour du cou.”)
— Aug 02, 2026 04:34AM
Noel
is on page 21 of 154
Starting over. It’s not quite as opaque to me as it was six months ago. (Then I had to look up like ten words a page; this time two or three.) I simply HAVE to practice because every day I physically feel the French slipping through my fingers…
— Jul 30, 2026 08:28PM
Noel
is on page 34 of 154
Il me tenait serrée contre lui, soulevée, la tête sur son épaule. En ce moment-là, je l’aimais. Dans la lumière du matin, il était aussi doré, aussi gentil, aussi doux que moi, il me protégeait. Quand sa bouche chercha la mienne, je me mis à trembler de plaisir comme lui et notre baiser fut sans remords et sans honte, seulement une profonde recherche, entrecoupée de murmures.
— Jan 23, 2026 03:41PM
Noel
is on page 13 of 154
Sur ce sentiment inconnu dont l’ennui, la douceur m’obsèdent, j’hésite à apposer le nom, le beau nom grave de tristesse. C’est un sentiment si complet, si égoïste que j’en ai presque honte alors que la tristesse m’a toujours paru honorable. Je ne la connaissais pas, elle, mais l’ennui, le regret, plus rarement le remords. Aujourd’hui, quelque chose se replie sur moi comme une soie,
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— Jan 22, 2026 12:53PM
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17 hours, 49 min ago
…construction I kept wondering why she was using until—way too late, about fifty pages from the end—I looked it up and found that it might actually be “the second form of the past conditional,” which would make a lot of sense.
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I’m not sure how much I have to say about the book, to be honest, but I’ll probably sit with my thoughts until tomorrow before work. (This wasn’t a very satisfying reading experience—I mean, outside the book. Like with To the Lighthouse, it was very chopped up and I’m sure I could have read it in four or five days during the school year, when I don’t work as much.)
Noel, congrats on making it all the way through in French! That’s genuinely impressive. A few years ago I tried reading The Little Prince in Italian and let’s just say my determination didn’t last nearly as long as yours. I gave up embarrassingly quickly, so I’m feeling a little envious of your persistence here. Finishing an entire B2 level novel in another language is no small thing!
Aww, thanks Pia G :) I think it’s just become a habit for me, like reading or watching movies generally. And it ebbs and flows like them too. (Although it plagues me at all times—like them too.) I find studying French comforting in a way because it isn’t connected with anything practical in my day to day life (although it would of course be useful in much of Canada, so I still have that goal)—so it’s a kind of escapism on a higher level than simply reading or watching a movie. A lot of the time when I’m feeling sad I’ll just read a comic book in French.
Noel wrote: "Aww, thanks Pia G :) I think it’s just become a habit for me, like reading or watching movies generally. And it ebbs and flows like them too. (Although it plagues me at all times—like them too.) I ..."I think I need to start thinking about Italian more like this, Noel - not as something I have to make progress in, but as something I can quietly fold into my life until it becomes a habit. Maybe that was my problem with The Little Prince.. I turned it into a task instead of letting the language become something I could enjoy and return to. I really like the idea of having another language as a kind of private little escape.😊