Thief of the Heart

By Martha Duffy

A FEW HOURS OF SUNLIGHT by Franc,oise Sagan. 185 pages. Harper & Row. $5.95.

Though she disguises it with worldliness, Franc,oise Sagan is something of a moralist. In her deft little romances, one is aware of the ethical reading as well as the emotional. Like temperature and humidity, they are complementary indications of the atmosphere.

A third of the way through her new book, a man whose career has been ruined by a homosexual scandal tells Gilles, the hero: "I've never lost anything I've given. It's what you steal from people that you pay dearly for, my dear boy, remember that." Gilles remembers it all right, but he is never able to act on it. As Sagan's most complete male character to date, Gilles is a sexy, glamorous journalist who is irretrievably light-fingered with other people's emotions and their trust. At 35, Gilles suddenly falls victim to a disease he had thought only struck his friends: a paralyzing "fear of life." An enviable job and a beautiful mistress seem like heavy burdens; each day is a "grim calvary." Desperate, he decides to spend some time with his sister in Limoges. Neither he nor the reader is much surprised to find that the most fascinating figure in local society, Nathalie Silvener, falls deeply in love with him. Her tenderness and loyalty gradually restore Gilles' equilibrium. When he goes back to Paris, she joins him. But Nathalie has a daily beauty in her life that makes Gilles feel increasingly ugly. Beside her, Gilles decides, he will never look good, and so he subtly sets out to remove her from his life.

At nearly 200 pages this is a long novel for Sagan, but the impression of swiftness that is her signature is as strong as ever. She is as clear and easy to read as Jane Austen, and though Austen was a genius and Sagan is merely talented, they have other things in common. Both evoke a comfortable trust from the reader because they rarely strike a false note, and both tend to decorate their pages with asides and epigrams. Here, for instance, is Gilles noting Nathalie's bookishness: "A well-read woman is less of a nuisance," he decides. "She knows more or less what to expect."

One knows as well what to expect from Sagan by now, a fact that has led to a certain amount of critical condescension. But what she delivers, though slight, is well made, wise and often funny entertainment, a relatively rare product these days.

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