Lie With Me: 'Stunning and heart-gripping' André Aciman

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It’s jeans that we unbutton. I discover his sex, veiny, white, sumptuous. I am enthralled by his sex. It will take many years and many lovers before I ever return to this sense of amazement. I’m on the playground with everyone else. It’s recess. I just got out of two hours of philosophy (“Can one assume at the same time the liberty of man and the existence of the unconscious?”), the kind of subject we are told can show up on “the bac,” the French end-of-high-school exam. I’m waiting for my biology class. The cold stings my cheeks. I’m wearing a predominantly blue Nordic sweater. A shapeless sweater that I wear too often. And then silence comes. Our looks shift, shyness and desire masking them. The kisses come. Carnivorous kisses. The first section of the book takes place when it was very unsafe to be gay, with both the social stigma and the coming years of the AIDS crisis. Did anything about the portrayal of homosexuality in the time period jump out to you? Besson is a thoughtful writer who can strike home with vivid imagery. . . [and] deftly translated [by Ringwald]. Booklist

This is a perfect mix of a summer read set in Greece and a edge-of-your-seat suspense novel…” - Red Magazine In any case, I like to repeat his name to myself in secret. I like to write it on scraps of paper. I am stupidly sentimental: that hasn’t changed much. Aïssaoui, Mohammed (3 May 2017). "Prix Orange du Livre: les cinq finalistes". Le Figaro (in French) . Retrieved 10 September 2023. Lie With Me is likely Besson’s most successful work so far, garnering international attention and acclaim. He followed up this book with Un personnage de roman (“A Character From A Novel”), which tells the story of Emmanuel Macron’s run for president in France. The Translator

You can see it in the bare branches of a tree you would think was dead planted there in the middle of the courtyard, and in the frost on the windows, and in the steam escaping from mouths and the hands rubbing together for warmth. I feel this desire swarming in my belly and running up my spine. But I have to constantly contain and compress it so that it doesn’t betray me in front of others. Because I’ve already understood that desire is visible. A lovely novel, a painful story of love and loss. . . Lie with Me succeeds as a novel because of Besson's graceful writing, beautifully translated by Ringwald. Besson is a gifted stylist, and he infuses Philippe's story with the right notes of sadness and longing. NPR

I remember Shanghai, the teeming crowd, the ugliness of the buildings, an artificial city that doesn’t even preserve the majesty of her river. I remember Johannesburg, its splendor and its poverty. I remember Buenos Aires, people dancing under a volcano, girls with endless legs and older women waiting for the return of their loved ones, the disappeared, a return that will never happen. Later still, the need for exile will put millions of miles and jet lag between France and me, and I will seriously consider moving to Los Angeles for good, never to return. But at seventeen years old, there is none of that. So here they are, in Jake’s home country, with his mother next door (in Antipodean terms) and awaiting the arrival of a new nanny so that Anna can start the new job that Jake’s friend has kindly arranged for her.

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I guessed that it was not the first time for him. His movements are too sure, too simple not to have been practiced before with someone else, maybe with many others. It’s during the dying notes of this song that Thomas appears. I didn’t see him come in, but all of a sudden he’s there in the middle of the room. From then on he occupies all the space, claiming it for himself. You would swear that the light went out on everyone else, or at least dimmed. (It reminds me of a screen test I saw once that James Dean did for Rebel Without a Cause. All the kids are gathered in a room; they’re healthy and attractive, their faces lined up like they’re in an El Greco painting, and then Jimmy walks in. Through the lens of the camera he looks smaller than the others, a little stoop shouldered and bookish, with a slight smirk on his face, and you can’t take your eyes off him. He makes everyone else disappear. I’ve probably embellished the scene in retrospect, though I do believe that there are certain men who eclipse everyone else in the room and leave you breathless.) I discover the pain of waiting, because there is this refusal to admit defeat, to believe that a future where it happens again is possible. I try to convince myself that he’ll make some kind of sign in my direction. The memory of our tangled bodies will overcome his resistance, it has to. As he told me himself, it’s a question of necessity. You can’t fight necessity. If you do, necessity will win. This movie explores the special significance of first love, coming of age, and the memories they create that last a lifetime. It was also a wonderful example of how we relate to another person who was unknown to us yet deeply loved the same person that we ourselves have loved. The common ground that two people have when they have both independently loved a third is thoughtfully explored.

I knew where the key was. It was dark and the air was stale but while the gestures could have been more precise, we were not modest. A million questions flash through my mind: How did it begin for him? How and at what age did it reveal itself? How is it that no one can see it on him? Yes, how can it be so undetectable? And then: Is it about suffering? Only suffering? And again: Will I be the first? Or were there others before me? Others who were also secret? And: What does he imagine exactly? I don’t ask any of these questions, of course. I follow his lead, accepting the rules of the game. It’s torsos that join together and then withdraw in a hurry to remove clothing, the Nordic sweater, the T-shirt, so that finally it’s skin next to skin. His torso is muscular and hairless, with nipples that are flat and dark. My chest is skinny, not yet deformed as it will be four years later by the blows of an emergency room doctor.I remember the movement of his hips pressing against the pinball machine. This one sentence had me in its grip until the end. Two young men find each other, always fearing that life itself might be the villain standing in their way. A stunning and heart-gripping tale.” —André Aciman, author of Call Me by Your Name He tells me about his little sisters, Nathalie and Sandrine. Sixteen and eleven years old respectively. Few books rise head and shoulders above others in their class. These books touch us in vulnerable places, impact us strongly as we read them and stay in our minds and hearts long after we’ve read them They become the books we will keep in our personal libraries, will re-read and re-read again and we feel and experience rather than just read. He then sees her walking down the street and follows her. She smiles but does not speak to him and breaks into a run, leading him to a playground. They crouch inside a small tunnel and watch each other as she begins to touch herself. This time, however, he leaves.

The critically acclaimed, internationally beloved novel by Philippe Besson—“this year’s Call Me By Your Name” ( Vulture) with raves in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, Vanity Fair, Vogue, O, The Oprah Magazine, and Out—about an affair between two teenage boys in 1984 France, translated with subtle beauty and haunting lyricism by the iconic and internationally acclaimed actress and writer Molly Ringwald.

This particular night was basically a gathering of high school students. I recognized a few faces. A pretty, popular girl who was friends with Nadine was celebrating her eighteenth birthday (the moment when one becomes of age, that critical milestone that says you are now officially grown, as if before this you were insignificant—a noncitizen. I’ve always been amused by these artificial frontiers). It was actually Nadine who’d insisted that I come with her, telling me that I wasn’t social enough, that real life was not lived in books, that there was nothing wrong with a little lightness, a little carefree partying. She was right. Maybe if I’d listened to her a lot earlier, I wouldn’t have missed out on my youth. In later years, I will often write about the unthinkable, the element of unpredictability that determines outcomes. And game-changing encounters, the unexpected juxtapositions that can shift the course of a life. I’m the youngest of my family. My brother is pursuing advanced studies and will soon write his thesis and become a doctor of mathematics, publishing articles in international journals that are inaccessible to laymen and attending conferences around the world. Imagine what it was like growing up after him. As good a student as I was, unfavorable comparisons were made regularly. It’s why, I explain to Thomas, the destiny he envisions for me can be considered only second-rate compared to the one that awaits my older brother. He assures me that I’m wrong.