If quick and easy reading were the principal criterion of a good style, then Françoise Sagan's style would be good indeed. But to those of us who insist that authors should not only say things well but should also have something worth saying to begin with, Mlle. Sagan can only prove a disappointment. In [Lost Profile], style and story alike have grown spare to the point of emaciation. (p. 110)

I found it impossible to decide which was more banal: the characters themselves or Mlle. Sagan's treatment of them. "I couldn't imagine Julius exhausted or even depressed. I tended to think of him as a bulldozer, but that was no doubt unfair of me, or unimaginative, which is often the same thing." Is this meant to be taken seriously? On just what basis are we to establish an identity between being unfair on the one hand and being...