Before Françoise Sagan the literary icon there was Françoise Quoirez, an eighteen-year-old Parisian girl, who wrote a novel.

This intimate narrative charts the months in 1954 leading up to the publication of the legendary Bonjour Tristesse. We encounter Françoise, her family and friends close-up, in a post-war world that is changing radically; and Mlle Quoirez, in her new guise of Françoise Sagan, will be at the heart of that social change.

Anne Berest was writing her third novel when Sagan's son, Denis Westhoff, asked her to write a book to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the publication of Bonjour Tristesse.