A gorgeous coming-of-age love story about two teenage boys in 1980s France.
Philippe Besson is the author of a number of award-winning novels
and screenplays. The French edition of Lie With Me sold over
120,000 copies, was a no.1 bestseller, and won the prestigious
Maison de la Presse prize.
Molly Ringwald's writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New
York Times, The Guardian, and Vogue, and she is the author of the
bestselling novel-in-stories When It Happens to You.
A beautiful, shattering novel about desire and shame, about
passionate youth and the regrets of age.
*Olivia Laing, bestselling author of 'Crudo' and 'The Lonely
City'*
A stunning and heart-gripping tale
*André Aciman, author of 'Call Me by Your Name'*
An intense, unforgettable novel, alive with the ache of longing and
loss.
*Sarah Waters, bestselling, award-winning author of 'The Little
Stranger'*
It has been years since anything moved me as much as Lie With Me.
It will become a classic
*Jonathan Coe, bestselling author of 'Middle England'*
A deeply moving depiction of first love, both tender and
elegiac.
*John Boyne, bestselling author of 'A Ladder to the Sky'*
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'*
An elegiac tale of first, hidden love between two teenage boys who
have no chance of a shared future, "Lie with Me" sold more than a
hundred thousand copies in France, where it won several prizes and
is being made into a movie.
*New Yorker*
Lie With Me is an exquisite whisper that lingers long after you've
finished reading it
*Kevin Kwan, author of 'Crazy Rich Asians'*
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'*
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*
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'*
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'*
A bittersweet love story, told from the perspective of a gay man
remembering his first romantic affair as a teenager in a small town
in the south of France in 1984.
*Wall Street Journal*
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'*
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 French Brokeback Mountain
*Elle*
A man looks back at his first love, a forbidden homosexual affair
during his last year of high school in a small French town in the
1980s. Though a screenwriter and playwright, Mr. Besson does not
rely on direct dialogue but reconstructs conversations from a fog
of memories in this coming-of-age story. A French best seller
likened to "Call Me By Your Name" and "Brokeback Mountain," the
novel marks the first English translation by the actress and writer
Ms. Ringwald, a longtime Francophile.
*Wall Street Journal, The 10 Books You’ll Want to Read This
Spring*
Molly Ringwald translated this French Call Me By Your Name-esque
novel about two teenagers in 1984 Bordeaux as they fall in love in
the shadows, leaving one of them to reflect on the relationship
many years later
*OprahMag.com, 30 of the Best LGBTQ Books in 2019*
There's much book-to-filmstar appeal in this moving, well-plotted
tale: Elle dubbed it "the French Brokeback Mountain"; there's
something of Call Me by Your Name's Elio in Philippe, who lives in
the books he reads and writes; and actress and writer Ringwald ably
translates.
*Booklist*
Moving ... Besson's writing and Ringwald's smooth translation
provide emotional impact.
*Publishers Weekly*
Universally touching
*Le Parisien*
Besson is a thoughtful writer who can strike home with vivid
imagery. . . [and] deftly translated [by Ringwald].
*Booklist*
This Year's Call Me by Your Name... While the starring peach of
Call Me by Your Name was the perfect metanym for that lush and
gauzy tale, Lie With Me unpeels like a springy orange. The boys'
relationship is bare but segmented, each encounter entirely
isolated from the others, with only a thin membrane to keep all
that tart juice from bursting out. . . [A] moving and graceful
novel
*Vulture*
A story of queer adolescence in rural France in the 1980s, Besson's
"Lie With Me" is a primer on the tenacity of desire... Molly
Ringwald, by delightful coincidence an icon of '80s John Hughes
films, provides a limpid translation that preserves all the earnest
mystery of teenage sex... Besson keeps his study in intimacy fresh
through nimble plot twists, in which the present disturbs a certain
version of the past, creating repercussions for the future. Equal
parts André Aciman and Marguerite Duras, "Lie With Me" poignantly
reflects on why some memories fade and others do not.
*New York Times*
A slender, sad, acute novel... absolutely excellent
*Sarah Perry, bestselling author of THE ESSEX SERPENT and
MELMOTH*
Full of Proustian echoes, this story of gay adolescence deals with
complex issues of class, shame and secrecy
*Guardian*
A poignant tale that captures the intensity of first love with all
its sadness, longing and regret
*Daily Mail*
A clear-sighted and passionate coming-of-age narrative. Detailing
in elegant and plain prose the anxious and intense first
falling-in-love between two schoolboys, Lie With Me has a
tenderness and insight that is reminiscent of the writings of Garth
Greenwell. This novel can be read in a matter of hours, but its
impact, like the love affair it details, will echo in the mind
*Irish Times*
Moving, intense, sad and sensuous
*Attitude*
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