In Those Without Shadows [Sagan's overriding theme] is right out in the open. She writes about emotional greed and passes it off as love.

This is a grab story, of A and B and C in love with D, B in love with A, and D in love with herself. The characters are blurry round the edges and the whole book, brief as it is, lacks form. The touch of the portentous, from which Mlle. Sagan has never been entirely free, is deepening; she has an odd trick of stepping back and splashing some generality at her ruttish noodles as from a great, sighing age of experience. It makes the novel look silly, which it is: and the writer look silly, which she is very far from being. But she could do with some time off, in which to think about people harder, and to consider how she...