Francoise Sagan

Francoise Sagan, the French writer who made international headlines as a teenager with her precocious first novel, "Bonjour Tristesse," died Friday. She was 69. Sagan died of heart and lung failure at a hospital near her home in Normandy. Born Francoise Quoirez to a well-to-do family in Cajarc in southwestern France, Sagan -- who took her pseudonym from a character in Marcel Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past" -- was educated in private and convent schools at home and in Switzerland.

Francoise Sagan, the French writer who made international headlines as a teenager with her precocious first novel, "Bonjour Tristesse," died Friday. She was 69. Sagan died of heart and lung failure at a hospital near her home in Normandy. Born Francoise Quoirez to a well-to-do family in Cajarc in southwestern France, Sagan -- who took her pseudonym from a character in Marcel Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past" -- was educated in private and convent schools at home and in Switzerland.

Novelist Francoise Sagan, who supports Socialist President Francois Mitterrand, says she is the victim of rightist leaks about her taste for cocaine. Sagan was charged with drug possession in Lyon on Thursday by a magistrate leading a two-year inquiry aimed at breaking an international trafficking ring. "Yes, I take cocaine. Hasn't everbody?" Sagan said. "But 30 people have been charged . . . and my name is the only one divulged."

Novelist Francoise Sagan, who supports Socialist President Francois Mitterrand, says she is the victim of rightist leaks about her taste for cocaine. Sagan was charged with drug possession in Lyon on Thursday by a magistrate leading a two-year inquiry aimed at breaking an international trafficking ring. "Yes, I take cocaine. Hasn't everbody?" Sagan said. "But 30 people have been charged . . . and my name is the only one divulged."

Francoise Sagan's female fans may have trouble identifying with this story told by a male of 60, writing of a woman he loved and lost 30 years before. There is too little dialogue in the book for the object of his unrequited passion or any of the other key characters to reveal themselves. So we are left with the narrator's gushy prose, forgivable perhaps because of the setting (French country estates), the romantic era (1830) and his own sentimental character.

*** 1/2 "Bonjour Tristesse." RCA/Columbia. $69.95. 1958. Though a failure in America--where its mix of French, British and Iowa accents grated on sophisticated audiences--this adaptation of then-teen-ager Francoise Sagan's novel is the cornerstone of director Otto Preminger's French reputation.

A FLEETING SORROW by Francoise Sagan. (Arcade: $19.95; 192 pp.) You know, almost from the beginning of this hysterical, histrionic, supremely French novel what will happen when Paul Cazavel, a robust, smug, peak-of-life architect and womanizer, is told by his replacement doctor (a man who strongly resembles a hamster in empathy and build) that he has six months to live.

Sometimes, the difference between freshness and cliche is no more than a hair's breadth. What, after all, is fresher--or more predictable--than youth; what experience as unique--or as common--as falling in love? Francoise Sagan, who rocketed to fame in 1954 with her novel, "Bonjour Tristesse," has continued to tread the fine line between triteness and truthfulness.

--Princess Diana denied she is a domineering wife, and Prince Charles said he does not try to contact dead relatives with a Ouija board. The royal couple were answering critics in their first television interview since their marriage in 1981. Diana, 24, told Independent Television News in a London broadcast that she is "scrawny" but not a diet enthusiast, not fashion-crazy and not strictly a fan of pop music.