A Certain Smile, Francoise Sagan's second book, after Hello Sadness, also was a bestseller in 1950s. It told about a student's love affair with a middle-aged man. Like Cécile, she is slightly bored of life, but she suddenly realizes that "some day I would die, that my hand would no longer touch the chromium rim, nor would the sun shine in my eyes." Another variation of the formula was presented in Aimez-vous Brahms? (1959), in which a young man falls in love with a middle-aged woman.

Although Sagan's works about love, marriage and rootless existence are classified often by male critics as entertainment, her earlier novels in particular deserve according to feminist critics more attention. The confessional tone of Bonjou tristesse has been considered a precursor in such writing by women from more recent years. Sagan once said that for her "writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm... Much of the time life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters." Her style is classically cool, restrained, austere, continuing the tradition of the French psychological novel during the decade when noveau roman made its breakthrough. Like in the works of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Sagan's lonely characters are disappointed in personal relationships, and try the fill the passage of time with the pursuit of pleasure. The polite everyday speech reveales the aimlessness of their lives.