[With the publication of "A Certain Smile"] Mlle. Sagan comes a bit more into focus. She has been listening to herself in the age-old wise way of born authors, has grown less shrill, allowed herself a bit more humor, even if wistful, and is less the pert voyeuse.

"A Certain Smile" takes the young first person protagonist from perhaps seventeen in the first book to nineteen or twenty when the current tale opens. Dominique, Mlle. Sagan's protagonist, is now a "serious" student at the Sorbonne and faces that vacuum of emotional direction so characteristic of the threshold of maturity. This little girl, whose capacity for life and love grows as she learns to avoid existentialist attitudinizing—is au fond a groping youngster with wit and perception….

In the process of emotional growth she is stripped of pretense, of indifference, and of a certain preoccupation with non-feeling very akin...