The Advocate's Best Gay Novel of 2019
A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice
O, The Oprah Magazine's Best LGBTQ Books That'll Change the Literary Landscape in 2019
**The Wall Street Journal's Ten Books You'll Want to Read this Spring
Out's Best Queer Books of April 2019
TheSkimm's LGBTQ+ books to celebrate Pride

"Stunning and heart-gripping." -André Aciman, author of Call Me By Your Name

The award-winning, bestselling French novel by Philippe Besson-"the French Brokeback Mountain" (Elle)-about an affair between two teenage boys in 1984 France, translated with subtle beauty and haunting lyricism by the iconic and internationally acclaimed actress/writer Molly Ringwald.

We drive at high speed along back roads, through woods, vineyards, and oat fields. The bike smells like gasoline and makes a lot of noise, and sometimes I'm frightened when the wheels slip on the gravel on the dirt road, but the only thing that matters is that I'm holding on to him, that I'm holding on to him outside*.*

Just outside a hotel in Bordeaux, Philippe chances upon a young man who bears a striking resemblance to his first love. What follows is a look back at the relationship he's never forgotten, a hidden affair with a gorgeous boy named Thomas during their last year of high school. Without ever acknowledging they know each other in the halls, they steal time to meet in secret, carrying on a passionate, world-altering affair.

Dazzlingly rendered in English by Ringwald in her first-ever translation, Besson's powerfully moving coming-of-age story captures the eroticism and tenderness of first love-and the heartbreaking passage of time.

“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

“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

"Lie With Me is an exquisite whisper that lingers long after you've finished reading it."
—Kevin Kwan, author of Crazy Rich Asians and China Rich Girlfriend

“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. Lie With Me captures their world with the grainy poignancy of an old high school yearbook, while movingly  conveying the quintessential human dramas of longing, love, and letting go.”
**—Caroline Weber, author of Proust's Duchess: How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin-de-siècle Paris **

“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

"A timeless love story, written with the unmistakable ache of truth. 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 and The 19th Wife

“At first erotic and joyous, ultimately elegiac and haunting, Lie With Me is a deceptively slender book as big as life itself.”
**—Rumaan Alam, the author of That Kind of Mother and Rich and Pretty

“This gorgeous, aching novel captures all of the fear and freedom of young desire. Besson’s sharp, compressed prose gets right to the heart of what it means to have to fall in love in secret. Thanks to Ringwald’s pitch-perfect translation, this affecting and sexy elegy may well be the best gay love story in contemporary fiction. I dare you to read it without crying.”
—Christopher Bollen, author of Orient and The Destroyers

“An intense, unforgettable novel, alive with the ache of longing and loss**.”**
—Sarah Waters, bestselling, award-winning author of The Little Stranger and Fingersmith

“It has been years since anything moved me as much as Lie With Me. It will become a classic."
—Jonathan Coe, author of Middle England and The Winshaw Legacy

“A beautiful, shattering novel about desire and shame, about passionate youth and the regrets of age.”
—Olivia Laing, author of Crudo and The Lonely City

“A deeply moving depiction of first love, both tender and elegiac.”
—John Boyne, author of A Ladder to the Sky and The Heart’s Invisible Furies

“Devastating and tender; this is the book I wish I'd read when I was 15, and a book I'm glad to have as a companion now.”
—Andrew McMillan, award-winning author of Physical

Autorentext

Philippe Besson

Klappentext

"Originally published in France in 2017 byâEditions Julliard, Paris as Arrãete avec tes mensonges"--Copyright page.

Zusammenfassung
A man passing through the French village of his youth revisits the passionate and secret love affair he had with another boy when they were teens after seeing someone who strongly resembles his long lost lover. 50,000 first printing.

Leseprobe
Lie With Me

Chapter One

1984