Lie With Me

This is a beautiful short novel, working through first love / sexual awakening and onto the loss and betrayal of youth. I was previously unaware of Besson, and only after did the meta-textual elements come to my attention; the suggestion that this may (or may not) be based on the author’s experiences unexpectedly hit me like a punch (and i now want to read novels referred to in the later stages of the book).

Told from the perspective of the adult looking back on his experiences, and later questioning his own reliability (memoir? Novel?), the emotional and physical connection to his younger self is palpable. If initially it feels a little “call me by your name”, the diversions Besson takes on the way set it apart - this is a superior novel in my mind.

That Molly Ringwald is now a translator is a surprise too...!

This was so convincingly written that I'm still not entirely sure that it is fiction. Nevertheless Lie With Me is a beautiful novella from beginning to end. Though at times I did feel that the text was oddly old fashioned when it came to depicting sexual encounters I do understand some liberties may have been taken in translation. That said I did think that the translative work was phenomenal, allowing what must be truly poetic prose shine through in any language. Quite frankly I'll be very surprised if it isn't adapted for film in future.

A sad story of a wasted life and a potential for love which is drained away - but while homophobia is the most acute obstacle in the book, class differences and economic considerations, though understated, also play a part.

Written as a memoir, the narrator recalls his past love for Thomas and analyses it from the mature standpoint of his present. It's intimate and captures the awkwardness and obsessions of youth, the all-encompassing headiness of first love - shaded by the future in proleptic style.

Besson captures the dynamics of erotic love, the tides of power, the willing submission, the elusive nature of the beloved. This is a short read, easily completed in a few hours - and I'd say it benefits from an intense immolation in its heated atmosphere. By the end, Thomas had achieved a kind of tragic intensity for me: 'it's a fear of himself too. A fear of what he is.'

(I've posted a fuller review on Goodreads)

Beautifully evocative of time, place and being in love for the first time, Lie With Me is one of the best short novels I’ve read in a long while.

The narrator, a fifty-something author, unsettled by an encounter at a hotel, remembers being 17 and falling in love with Thomas, a fellow high school student in a small town in France in 1984. Their relationship is brief and kept secret because of societal norms and expectations. It affects the rest of their lives in different ways, elegiac and tragic. It also affected me as a reader, both immersing me completely in the narrative and the mood and prompting my own recollections. It is a wonderful book to read in one sitting.

What I really loved about Lie With Me is its ambiguity. There are enough hints throughout to make you wonder whether this is a work of fiction or a memoir. The narrator tells you that he is an accomplished liar in one moment and in the next highlights the clarity with which he remembers a look or a feeling nearly forty years later. Looking up Philippe Besson after finishing, I lamented the fact that I can’t read French and came across a recent short interview in The New Yorker where he says “I wanted to write a sadness.” And there is great sadness, judgemental society, homophobia, repression, loss of innocence and love.

Lie With Me will invite comparisons with Call Me By Your Name, which I haven’t read, only seen the film but, together with the fact that Molly Ringwald translated it, I hope this will lead to a wide readership the book deserves. I also hope that it will lead to further translations of Besson’s novels into English.

My thanks to Penguin and Netgalley for the opportunity to read Lie With Me.