Lie With Me (2017)-Philippe Besson (translated by Molly Ringwald)
This book comes so close to its potential of being heartbreaking
Content Warnings: Suicide, homophobia, sexual content
Fav quote: “I’m seventeen years old. I don’t know then that one day I won’t be seventeen.”
Lie with Me is a solemn coming-of-age story about a young man’s secret relationship with another schoolboy—his first love Thomas. The shortness of the novel is accentuated by its division in three parts: the first and largest part in 1984 where the brief relationship took place, the second part twenty-three years later in 2007 when the main character Philippe meets Thomas’s son, and the final part where Philippe once again meets Thomas’s son In 2016.
Having never interacted before the sudden start of Philippe and Thomas’s secret relationship, their interactions come across as stunted and it is necessary for the narrator to repeatedly refer to it as love to offset the reasonable assumption of readers that their relationship is solely sexual. This sense of emotional distance is made clear throughout the course of their relationship as a fundamental aspect of how Thomas fails to express himself.
This book can hardly be described as a love story despite first love being at its core. Rather it is a story of circumstance and loss—loss of each other, loss of ambition, and loss of authenticity. The story comes so close to capturing a heartbreaking balance of genuine connection with this loss but falls short at the start of the novel. In the beginning the writing feels cliché and fails to allow readers to feel the weight of the initial relationship before its end. It does nearly make up for it in its subsequent parts as Philippe reflects on how the relationship has stayed with him for all those years.
As a whole, Lie With Me is a moving story despite its slow start. Additionally, it is a quick read making it consumable and enjoyable for all types of readers. Should the author have included more dialogue rather than references to conversations, the characters in the beginning would likely have had the same impact that they have later on in the novel making the overall reading experience more engaging, but as is, Lie With Me is worth the read.