Recommendations

Books Like Dans un mois, dans un an by Françoise Sagan

Books for readers who loved Sagan's Parisian ensemble and the consolation that time will change everything

Dans un mois, dans un an (1957) is Sagan's most socially expansive novel — a group of writers, editors, and lovers in literary Paris, moving through a year of shifting attachments, sustained by the mantra that whatever is unbearable now will be different in a month, in a year. These 8 books share its ensemble of sophisticated Parisians, its portrait of literary milieu, and its study of how people manage the passage of time.

  1. Bonjour Tristesse cover
    1

    Bonjour Tristesse

    by Françoise Sagan

    The debut — the best starting point for Sagan, with a single narrator and sharper focus; read it before Dans un mois if you haven't yet.

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  2. Aimez-vous Brahms... cover
    2

    Aimez-vous Brahms...

    by Françoise Sagan

    The fourth novel — returns to focused single-narrator Sagan after the ensemble expansion; the most emotionally complex of the early works.

    Buy on Amazon
  3. The Dud Avocado cover
    3

    The Dud Avocado

    by Elaine Dundy

    An American girl loose in 1950s Paris — a comedy of the same milieu that Dans un mois inhabits seriously, with the same parties, publishing figures, and romantic entanglements.

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  4. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes cover
    4

    Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

    by Anita Loos

    An earlier comedy of women navigating the world of wealthy men — a lighter American version of the social world that Sagan observes with French precision.

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  5. The Group cover
    5

    The Group

    by Mary McCarthy

    Eight Vassar women moving through New York from 1933 to 1940 — the American ensemble novel most comparable to Dans un mois, with the same interest in educated women's lives as they diverge from their starting point.

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  6. 6

    Lovers and Strangers

    by Françoise Sagan

    A later Sagan collection of stories — for readers who want more of the Parisian short-form world that Dans un mois inhabits.

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  7. The Mandarins cover
    7

    The Mandarins

    by Simone de Beauvoir

    The major French ensemble novel of the same period — the post-Liberation Parisian intellectual world that Sagan's lighter, more frivolous characters also inhabit; reading both gives the full social picture.

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  8. Mrs. Dalloway cover
    8

    Mrs. Dalloway

    by Virginia Woolf

    The great modernist portrait of a London social world — Clarissa Dalloway's preparations for a party, the figures who inhabit her day, and the question of what it means to organise a life around social connection.

    Buy on Amazon

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