Lie with Me: A Novel

This was a quick read but I found it quite encaptivating. The book revolves around two men following their lives in three time periods: HS (1984), 2007 and the 2016. Most of the book is in the HS period where the two have a sexual awakening with each other. It continues to focus on the boys as they approach the time when they are deciding what's next with their lives. Not giving the book away, each faces a time of personal angst trying to come to grips with their sexuality, cultural norms and whether they are at peace in their own skin. The last two time periods are the results of their decisions and what could have been. The last chapter, although the shortest of the three, really hit me, as it relates to my life. As a gay man I could relate to both men during each period of their lives. It's a short book at 148 pages. The sections within the 3 chapters are often only paragraphs but the technique definitely works. Really liked this book.

Do not pigeonhole Lie with Me as a “gay novel.” This beautiful and heartwrenching novel charts first love and lust between two adolescents: the continuing obsession of the one into adulthood, the tragic consequences social convention and filial duty lay upon the other . . . and they happen to be same-sex. If you have ever been in love, desperately in love, overwhelmed with intense and insatiable desire, then suffered the all-consuming heartbreak of loss . . . this is the book for you. Brilliantly translated from the French by Molly Ringwald (yes, THAT Molly Ringwald), the prose practically sizzles off the page with eroticism, all the more so as the details of sex are couched in terms of passion and desire. As Julian Barnes has written, "Most of us have only one story to tell. I don't mean that only one thing happens to us in our lives . . . but there's only one that matters, only one finally worth telling." This is Besson’s story, whether it’s confessional memoir or fiction (there is the double-entendre of the English title “lie” with me) or some combination of both. If Duras, whom Besson quotes in the opening epigraph and imitates with his narrative style, speaks to you, thrills your senses with the pain of recognition, then, regardless of sexual preference, Besson will grip your heart too. Love, longing and loss are universal.

Almost nothing and no one did I like in this novel. Probably I was expecting way too much. After all, Andre Aciman had commended it, and I have LOVED his (many times read) "Call Me By Your Name," (practically Shakespearian in many places). But here we get an accounting of two gay guys meeting, both weak (one permanently so), trying to handle (and hide) sexual desires. The author implies their interaction one of "love" (with several alternative descriptions). What I see is loveless lust. One seems a "cranially" damaged individual -- at birth? childhood accident? The other too weak to bring/ demand that the interaction grow. It does not turn out well. The author seems to want to present a tragedy of homosexual love; I see persistent/ inflexible selfishness that real love would have overcome or ended well before such damage. I find myself not caring one whit what happens to these characters. To me this is not a story of love---"lust gone wrong" perhaps. While I'm at it: The author chooses to omit actual dialogue. Telling about a happening (especially an intimate one between two people) loses impact when "just described" and even that is quite limited here as far as any love goes. Really good dialogue is hard--easier to take the "descriptive route." Writing a really good "love scene" is hard - - easier to skip it. "They made love" does not do it.

This short memoir was initially released in French as ‘Arrête avec tes Mensonges’ which is translated directly as ‘Stop With Your Lies.’ The book is separated into three chapters; the first begins with two high school boys at a small village in the French countryside. The two begin a clandestine affair that starts as a physical relationship and merges into something more. As these lovers navigate into adulthood, we see their relationship change as summer begins. We learn of their families, backgrounds, ethnicity, and class status. Then everything changes. I don’t want to say much more because I was quite surprised about the back half of this personal memoir. Though only about 150 pages, so much emotion is packed into this book that I couldn’t put it down and I finished it in two quick sittings. I didn’t expect the ending of this book and the final page blew me away. I’ve never read a memoir quite like this, and it almost seems impossible how the events unfold. Besson writes an amazing story that flows and weaves with asides and tangents that pull the reader through a complex story only to build to a final heart wrenching climax. The writer challenges his own memory and questions the reliability of memory. It’s also in some ways a cautionary tale, a warning of what happens when people aren’t free to be themselves. I think the original French title fits this book better than the English, but overall the translation was excellent. I hope many people take a moment to read this during pride month to remember where we have been, what is at stake, what we have already lost. • Scribner Books • ★★★★★ • Hardcover • Nonfiction - Memoir, LGBT • Recommended by @jananav and several other people on Instagram. • Purchased online. ◾︎

"Lie with Me", a novella in three chapters by the French author Philippe Besson, is a work of art, of literature.For this reason, it deserves more attention and a more thoughtful review than a single reading can afford. I will say that it leaves your heart and your mind equally transfixed, which is how literature on a par with "Giovanni's Room", for example, must.I urge you to read it, to become transfixed.

I've just read Philippe Besson's 'Lie with Me', which has been described as the French 'Call Me by Your Name'-slash-'Brokeback Mountain'. It's affecting stuff, even if its predecessors got there before it, rendering it a little been there, done that.The thing I'll take away from it probably more than anything else has nothing to do with the story, however. Since I read it in translation - my schoolboy French being far too limited for me to ever consider attempting the original - I had to laugh at the pages of praise pasted into the front of the book from foreign reviewers, all of whom unfailingly mention that it was translated by Molly Ringwald. I mean, does it read well? Sure. But it's not like any of them actually know the original to be able to say how good a translation it is, and the cynic in me assumes it wouldn't even rate a mention if the translator weren't an erstwhile celebrity.Basically, what I'm saying is: if you're going to read it, read it because you've heard it's a great novel, not because the known-name translator is name-dropped at every opportunity. (No offence, Molly - I've no doubt your translation really is very good.)

A recollection of a first love between two teenage boys in a small French town. It ends ubruptly but returns to haunt the protagonists twenty years later, with the consequences of living a lie. I was blown away.

Two schoolboys enjoy a secret summer love affair. It's the stuff of gay teen romance. But there the resemblance ends, for in the 1980s in Catholic France you had to be in the closet - with all the psychological damage that caused. The author, Philippe Besson, is one of the boys; the other is a farmer's son, Thomas, who is an inarticulate, unsociable and secretive character: he uses silence to protect a secret he can never acknowledge. They split when the summer ends, as is the way with summer romances, and take very different paths. Philippe becomes a successful out gay author. Thomas gets a girl pregnant...The story is told in three sections. In the second section we move on 23 years, to an encounter between Philippe and Thomas's grown-up son Lucas, who looks uncannily like his father. In the third, nine years on, they meet again, when he has some revelations about his father to impart.The silence that surrounds this brief, tender, inarticulate love affair, ultimately leads to tragedy. One of the lovers faces up to who he is and makes a success of it; the other hides it even from those closest to him. There is a very obvious message here. Perhaps too obvious? We only see Thomas through the eyes of Philippe, so it's difficult to know what was going through his mind all those years he kept his homosexuality hidden. Was there a betrayal here? And if so, who betrayed whom?A subtle, sad and sexy novella, written from the darkness of the closet, one which explores the nature of first love and its effects down the years.

Loved this. It took a while to build up. Earlier in the book, I was thinking "is it just going to trundle on like this?" And while it refers in reviews to it being a nostalgic 80s novel there was actually very little which rooted it in any time or place. But the overall effect is cumulative. It gets more and more moving. Finished it with tears in my eyes. A short but beautiful tale to make you reflect on all that you have lost.

I had bought this book ages ago but have only just got round to reading it during lockdown: I had to read it in one go and couldn't put it down.....it is both heart warming but heart breaking. There is a wonderful depth to the two lovers and their experiences. I can see why there are comparisons to Call Me By Your Name or Brokeback Mountain ( but I'm sure they're mentioned just to get it noticed since it stands alone for me); it reads like a memoir and the translation is beautifully done.