Lie With Me: A Novel Kindle Edition

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. ◾︎

In November 2021, the core members of the book discussion group at The LGBT Center in NYC had a great two-hour discussion about this "novel." We were pretty united in our belief that this is a well told story and a terrific read. The reason it didn't get five stars is because it is too short, the coincidences too convenient, and the plot unoriginal.Many of us are suckers for a romantic story and "Lie With Me" offers plenty of meaty emotion, although told with a cool and slightly distant tone.The basic coming-out story is exceptionally well ordered and affecting. It seems very cinematic, from the opening prologue before the major flashback to the lovely scenes between the secret lovers. The two meetings between the narrator Philippe and Thomas' son Lucas later in the novel are full of poignant possibilities.On first reading, the novel seems hopefully romantic in a nostalgic way but on careful re-reading, it's easy to identify with the hidden, secret nature of Philippe's and Thomas' doomed affair. The whole novel is very French: grave rather than merely sincere; with many examples of uninteresting and unnecessary philosophizing, much of which is appropriate for a teenager; and completely aware and engaging with the negative aspects of the romantic situation.We were also vaguely interested in the LA, porn star life that the narrator alludes to. The narrator seems to have a rich, full life in many ways.A serious question arises: Is this a fake memoir, perhaps an "aspirational memoir," as Derek referred to it? The narrator is also named Philippe and the novel is dedicated to Thomas Andrieu (1966-2016). The narrator refers to his actual other novels. Besson also says "I know how lies need to be cloaked" as he lies to his mother. Maybe Philippe (in the novel) is an unreliable narrator who depends on us to join him in creating his lies.Frank pointed out the conclusion of 2019 The Guardian review by Tessa Hadley:-- We don’t feel enough of Thomas’s separate reality. When for once, after lovemaking, Thomas is actually talking and telling Philippe about his life, on the page Philippe repeatedly interrupts him, intruding fragments from his own experience as if he can’t bear not to be the centre of his own novel’s attention for even a moment. I once picked grapes too! I too learned how to milk a cow! Oh, you live there – that’s where my grandmother died! The narrator spends too much time backing into his own limelight, and in the end the whole tragic story seems narrated so as to validate and enhance Philippe’s famous-writer persona. Thomas may have been the unattainable love-object, inarticulate and desirable and other, yet everything he did turns out to have been because of Philippe, or addressed to Philippe. Well, maybe it happened like that. "Lie With Me" is full of Proustian echoes. It’s worth remembering that in Proust’s novel Albertine can’t belong to anyone, no matter how hard they try to possess her: not to the character Marcel, nor to Marcel the writer. --I'd also like to point out that in the novel, Philippe checks out the Proust "Remembrance of Things Past" from the high school library, another Proustian echo. The English title "Lie With Me" (versus the French title "Stop With Your Lies") fits very nicely with this idea of both the author and the reader joining to create this fake memoir.Compared to other novels we've read, "Lie With Me" also echoed the affair in "Call Me by Your Name" by André Aciman as well as the small-town French homophobia and violence of "The End of Eddy" by Édouard Louis. In some ways, it also reminded me of the two gay men in "Mysterious Skin" by Scott Heim, who take very different approaches to their gayness. We all rejected Elle magazine's calling of the novel "a French Brokeback Mountain."If you continue to question my idea that the plot is unoriginal, I can point out two movies in the same vein.Steve K. pointed out that the movie "Summer of 85" ("Été 85") is a 2020 French-Belgian drama film written and directed by gay director François Ozon, partly based upon the 1982 novel "Dance on My Grave" by Aidan Chambers is a very similar French high-school story. "Summer of 85" is available on Amazon Prime Video.Lloyd pointed out that the 2016 French film “Being 17” ("Quand on a 17 ans") also picks up the theme, set in the same area of France and involving high school students who live on farms. It's written and directed by gay director André Téchiné (who also directed "Wild Reeds"), and is available on Amazon Prime Video.On a personal note, I was irritated by the random and completely unnecessary paragraph breaks in the text, which got worse as I noticed them more and more.

How a secret young love affair touched both of their lives long after it happened.

It’s only been recent that I have found the author Philippe. But his words and stories are so carefully and painfully crafted. This book is short, too short but maybe that’s the point. His stories are often about fierce passion; first loves. This story does an amazing job portraying the different struggles of homosexuality. More than that it is a perfect example of so many first loves. They are often chaotic, confusing, passionate and too short. First loves are small blimps in our lives yet they stay with us forever. I encourage ANYONE who is thinking about reading this to please read it.

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.