Lie With Me

November 15, 2018

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 18, 2019
Besson (In the Absence of Men) rehashes familiar tropes about secret teenage gay romance in this moving but unoriginal novel. Novelist Philippe, who shares many biographical details with the author, falls into a reverie about his first experience of romance when he spots a young man who looks just like his first lover from a couple decades earlier. Philippe, a high achieving 17-year-old student, frets about being gay in 1984 Barbezieux, France. Thomas Andrieu, a much cooler student and the son of a farmer, unexpectedly approaches Philippe with an invitation to lunch. Eating far away from the crowds, Thomas boldly offers a clandestine relationship. Philippe and Thomas pass notes with places and times for their meetings and pretend to not know each other otherwise. The adult Philippe relishes the memories in richly described erotic encounters. Their initially silent trysts blossom into conversation and love, but always remain secret. Thomas abruptly leaves town after school, leaving Philippe to wonder what happened until the chance encounter with the young doppelgänger provides insights and sets the stage for a tragic culmination. Despite the predictable plot, Besson’s writing and Ringwald’s smooth translation provide emotional impact. Agent: Benita Edzard, Robert Laffont.

March 15, 2019
A bestselling French writer--or at least the novelized version of a bestselling French writer--reckons in older age with a passionate affair he had as a young man.Written in an almost confessional first-person, Besson's (His Brother, 2005, etc.) latest is a French bestseller set in the mid-1980s in a small, "gray" Bordeaux town "doomed to disappear." The narrator, an ambitious high school student and son of the principal, falls deeply for a fellow student, the "slender and distant" Thomas Andrieu, a character in the novel but also apparently an actual person to whom the novel is dedicated. Thomas is beautiful but not worldly; he's a sensitive, stunted stud who doesn't see a way out of the town. Different as he and the narrator are, they nonetheless initiate an affair that takes place in hidden rooms on campus and at the narrator's home when his parents aren't around. Besson's initial reluctance to put names to their sex acts ("I am enthralled by his sex," the narrator writes, as if it's 1822) feels musty, though the author does get more descriptively honest as the story progresses. The love between the two feels real and memorable, and Besson is a thoughtful writer who can strike home with vivid imagery, particularly as he and Thomas age and grow apart and Thomas' son, Lucas, develops a friendship of sorts with the narrator. The only quibble is that this book, which is deftly translated, doesn't exactly feel like a novel; it reads like a memoir. In fact, the only thing that keeps it from being garden-variety autofiction is Besson's willingness to wink at his decision to make fictional an experience that seems to be based in reality.An insightful reminder that in the years before gay dating apps zapped the mystery out of erotic pursuit, love between even mismatched men could be lifesaving.

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