Lie With Me

'Stunning and heart-gripping' André Aciman

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Pub Date 5 Sep 2019 | Archive Date 23 Sep 2019

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Description

THE NO.1 FRENCH BESTSELLER AND WINNER OF THE MAISONS DE LA PRESSE PRIZE

‘A beautiful, shattering novel about desire and shame, about passionate youth and the regrets of age’ Olivia Laing

'Stunning and heart-gripping' André Aciman, author of Call Me by Your Name

Just outside a hotel in Bordeaux, Philippe, a famous writer, chances upon a young man who bears a striking resemblance to his first love. What follows is a look back to Philippe's teenage years, to a winter morning in 1984, a small French high school, and a carefully timed encounter between two seventeen-year-olds. It's the start of a secret, intensely passionate, world-altering love affair between Philippe and his classmate, Thomas.

Dazzlingly rendered by Molly Ringwald, the acclaimed actor and writer, in her first-ever translation, Besson's exquisitely moving coming-of-age story captures the tenderness of first love - and the heart-breaking passage of time.

‘It has been years since anything moved me as much as Lie With Me. It will become a classic’ Jonathan Coe

‘An intense, unforgettable novel, alive with the ache of longing and loss’ Sarah Waters

‘A deeply moving depiction of first love, both tender and elegiac’ John Boyne

THE NO.1 FRENCH BESTSELLER AND WINNER OF THE MAISONS DE LA PRESSE PRIZE

‘A beautiful, shattering novel about desire and shame, about passionate youth and the regrets of age’ Olivia Laing

'Stunning...


Advance Praise

'Stunning and heart-gripping' André Aciman, author of Call Me by Your Name

'A timeless love story. Molly Ringwald's translation is as clear and beautiful as the story it depicts. You'll read it in a night, but its exquisite heartbreak will linger' David Ebershoff, author of The Danish Girl

'The uncanny thrill of Philippe Besson's Lie With Me rises up from Molly Ringwald's elegant translation with the intensity of meeting a stranger on a train who tells you a single unforgettable story and then leaves. And his voice haunts me still' Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel and The Queen of the Night


'May well be the best gay love story in contemporary fiction. I dare you to read it without crying.' Christopher Bollen, author of The Destroyers

'Lie With Me is an exquisite whisper that lingers long after you've finished reading it’ Kevin Kwan, author of Crazy Rich Asians

‘In spare yet evocative prose, elegantly translated by Molly Ringwald, Philippe Besson relates the erotic awakening of two adolescent boys in a small French town in the 1980s.’ Caroline Weber, author of Proust's Duchess: How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin-de-siècle Paris


‘This is a gorgeous fever dream of a book. Ringwald's translation does elegant justice to Besson's balance of beauty and despair, and to his interrogations of memory and longing. Lie With Me positively glows in the dark.’ Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers


‘At first erotic and joyous, ultimately elegiac and haunting, Lie With Me is a deceptively slender book as big as life itself’ Rumaan Alam, author of That Kind of Mother and Rich and Pretty

'Stunning and heart-gripping' André Aciman, author of Call Me by Your Name

'A timeless love story. Molly Ringwald's translation is as clear and beautiful as the story it depicts. You'll read it in...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9990241987094
PRICE £8.99 (GBP)
PAGES 160

Average rating from 106 members


Featured Reviews

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...!

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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.

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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)

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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.

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