And finally, who remembers the C terminals? They say “S” today, I think. Even if this initial does not represent the same reality. These were the classes in mathematics, supposedly the most selective, the most prestigious. The ones that opened the doors to the preparatory classes that in turn led to the big schools, while the others condemned you to local colleges or professional studies or vocational school or just stopped there, as though you had been left in a cul-de-sac. The story of a gay adolescent/man unable to accept his orientation, the damage his living lie does to others, the extension of his lie in his adult relationship, the impact on the man who truly loved him as well as on himself transcends the details of the plot and storyline. This is the kind of book that will recall in all gay readers their own struggles with self-acceptance, but more importantly, it cannot help but impact heterosexual readers with a greater empathy for those who do not share their sexual orientation.

Truly stunning & original & rare. One of the most odious & compelling & fascinating narrator's ever.” - Claire Kendal, author of THE BOOK OF YOU To escape this feeling of being excommunicated, I reason with myself: perhaps he was simply disappointed, I didn’t live up to what he had imagined. I keep telling myself that despite the evidence, it can be fixed, I can make it up to him. I’m already hoping to be able to beg for another chance. I hang on to the possibility of redemption.I don’t ask him if he also has his mother’s fragility, even though I’ve been dying to ask ever since he told me that his sister has their father’s strength. He would refuse to answer the question anyway because it’s too intimate. It would require a confession on his part, or at least introspection. But I’m convinced that the fineness of his frame comes from her, and his nonchalance too. 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 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.

I wonder if my grandmother could have committed suicide. I don’t know. I like to believe that she did it, as it would have been the sole act of freedom in her entire existence. A woman who spent her whole life making children (seven in twenty years), raising them, and then being relegated to remain in the shadow of a celebrated and capricious husband. And him; he watches what they do. He knows that they find him attractive. Good-looking guys always know it. It’s a calm kind of certainty. A beautiful novella/memoir. Besson insists it is fiction, but the novella itself is replete with references to the main character denying his novels are actually memoir and each time he is totally lying. If this is fiction, Besson is a master. He created a beautiful and utterly believable story.The book covers the first love of our narrator who is named, like the "novelist", Philippe, and his reintroduction to that lover's story 20+ years after he left. Besson magically captures the ephemeral beauty of first love, which in spite of that ephemerality, remains with us forever because it is the only love we ever have before heartbreak makes us too cautious to be fully vulnerable. The story's end, many years later reached by coincidence or fate breaks the heart into smaller bits. There is nothing surprising or revolutionary here. Rather it is a relatable tale, filled with feelings most of us have had, told in the simplest yet most lyrical way. It is simply lovely. I listened to the audio, and thought the narrator, Jacques Roy, was excellent. Read moreI’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. His name I know because I found it out for myself. Just like that, one day in the most casual way, before moving on to something else. But I didn’t find out any other details. Though Lie With Me is the first French book we’ve chosen for the book club, French is actually the most common language to be translated into English. France and America’s literary histories are intertwined, as both Paris and New York have been important centers of written culture in the past 100 years. It’s no coincidence that the American expatriate authors of the early 20th century — Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein — chose Paris to settle down in. Discussion Questions 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' This gorgeous, aching novel captures all of the fear and freedom of young desire. . . 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'