"A Few Hours of Sunlight" is in reality a couple of hours of bone-crushing boredom. It's not the subject matter, the putting on and taking off of mistresses by a French playboy, but the inability of the author to re-create successfully the kind of hero she had in mind, the kind of hero you find in the letters of Stendhal…. Miss Sagan's hero, Gilles, is not only a bore but a papier-maché bore whom she unfortunately believes to be a vicious man. (p. 73)

[Apart from the narration of the love affair between Gilles and Nathalie, the book] consists of the author's attempts to create a sow's ear out of a cheap silk purse, an attempt which is futile because the silk purse, Gilles, is too superficial to be vicious. But Miss Sagan never realizes this. Nor does she seem to realize that Nathalie is neither an honorable nor...