The Murky Smile. Signal of Surrender

Françoise Sagan is a strange star of French literature, an invariably modern classic beyond any modernity. She wrote her stories about love in emptiness, where there are no events in the world, but there's always pleasant pastimes, under the influence of Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialism. Her stories are clearly inspired by Maupassant. In part, she is a literary sister of Salinger, a creative ancestor of Sally Rooney: the microscopic movements of the soul have always interested both herself and her heroes much more than any external events and personal actions. And yet, in real life, Sagan had a place for scandals in social chronicles, gambling, passionate love, and a very substantial reality — for example, the Paris events of 1968. She lived as she pleased in a world where a woman was still assigned a boring, narrow, subordinate role of "decoration," and all her heroines subtly or openly rebel against such casting: pretending to play by the rules, sometimes getting overly engrossed and even beginning to sincerely believe in their own game, they undermine the imposed laws simply by constantly being very aware of them. This collection includes two stunningly honest stories about the birth and death of love: "The Murky Smile" — a tale of its inevitable hopelessness and of how a lovestruck woman is capable of deceiving herself, and "Signal of Surrender" — a novel about a love that occurs inexorably and just as inexorably fades away when a woman is seen merely as a decoration that is flattering to possess.