Review: "The Four Corners of the Heart" by Françoise Sagan

 

The Four Corners of the Heart by Françoise Sagan
Translated by Sophie R. Lewis
Published June 2023 via AmazonCrossing
★★★

When Françoise Sagan died in 2004, she left behind a literary oeuvre to make any writer envious—and with her completed and much loved works, she left also The Four Corners of the Heart, now making its English debut in all its rough glory.

Perhaps best described as a cross between a soap opera and a scathing indictment of the bourgeoisie (and oh, how it delights me to be able to use the phrase "a scathing indictment of the bourgeoisie" with a complete lack of irony), The Four Corners of the Heart follows a patched-together household through a most unusual time in their lives: the prodigal son has just returned from a long stint in hospital that he was not expected to survive; his wife has rejected him; his father is determined that the son get adequate attention from prostitutes if no one else; and the son has transferred his affections to the only person to treat him as a functioning human in the wake of his accident—his wife's mother. Chaos, predictably, ensues.

I read Bonjour Tristesse immediately before The Four Corners of the Heart, because it seemed unfair to know Sagan only by her last, unfinished work rather than by her celebrated first novel. Her microfocus on the follies of a family bring to mind Jane Austen, of all people, although only if Austen had written her books in twentieth-century France and with a great deal more bed-hopping. In Four Corners, we Sagan's voice is clear as a bell: in the character studies, in the sardonic eye cast upon the rambling house (full, naturally, of conflicting styles, uniform only in their poor taste), in the great rise toward the climax—

And yet it is (as advertised) an unfinished novel: not entirely unedited, as the author's son (who now manages her estate) notes in the afterword, but unfinished. It's hard to know how to rate it, because there are so many unknowns left in the book. We'll never know just where Sagan would have gone with this (or how different her own edits might have been), but I hope it's a success—for many reasons, but also because if it's a big enough success then perhaps someday the publisher and estate will collaborate with, say, three contemporary authors and publish an edition of this with three different endings.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a free review copy through NetGalley.