Andrée’s assumption in The Inseparables, that books were enough for Sylvie, has the force of a lover’s complaint. Andrée is the most important person in Sylvie’s life at that point and her opinion matters. Being poised must attract as many people as it puts off, but when I’m taken with someone, the idea that they’d prefer someone to laugh at their jokes rather than analyze everything haunts me, as it haunts Lenù, Sylvie, and Mary. Books do serve in an emotional crisis, and in curious ways: Lenù in particular can draw people to her with what she writes, can bury herself in books when her crush falls for someone else, can muddle a suitor’s intellectual status with love, can use her writing to make her passion last. Beauvoir would struggle wherever she loved, and writing could be a refuge for her, a routine, an escape but never quite enough on its own. In The Inseparables, Sylvie’s attention is occupied by Andrée’s romantic entanglements, while in life, Simone had Sartre waiting in the Jardin du Luxembourg to talk about Plato—and a career as a writer and thinker within reach.