Though called an autobiography, [Réponses] is in fact a selection from a series of interviews given by Françoise Sagan over the past 20 years. The inner voice that would inform and enrich any autobiography is not at all the same as the calculated one that answers questions to journalists…. [What] is bound to emerge from a book of this kind are statements, observations, postures, opinions, random philosophising and anecdotes that acquaint us with the protagonist's likes and dislikes….

[Miss Sagan] emerges as a thoughtful, generous, tolerant, unsure, unbitchy lady….

Her two main themes are love and loneliness, and love gets in the way of loneliness, or, if you like, postpones it. Love, she feels, is a battle; sex, a secret lyrical ceremony; and jealousy, though exhilarating, a sure index that the love is dying….

Like all writers, she defines herself through her writing. She discovers what she...