Françoise Sagan's 12th novel ["The Unmade Bed"] is set, like the other 11, among the rich, the glamorous, the cosmopolitan, the bored. This time her subject is the love affair of tempestuous Beatrice Valmont, the movie star, and Edouard Maligrasse, a struggling playwright on the verge of triumph….

[Although Sagan] constantly claims that Beatrice and Edouard are fascinating, rare and altogether superior beings, she doesn't seem able to summon up the energy to make us see why. Edouard, supposedly a genius, shows no special qualities of mind; Beatrice, supposedly a voluptuary, has the sensitivity of a Barbie Doll to the complexities of passion: accused by a friend of rebuffing Edouard, she gurgles, "But all he had to do was rape me!" Miss Sagan's breathless and infatuated evocation of elegance and fame lacks body: She is not interested in how movies are made, what actresses actually do when they...