Lie With Me: A Novel

How a secret young love affair touched both of their lives long after it happened.

In November 2021, the core members of the book discussion group at The LGBT Center in NYC had a great two-hour discussion about this "novel." We were pretty united in our belief that this is a well told story and a terrific read. The reason it didn't get five stars is because it is too short, the coincidences too convenient, and the plot unoriginal.Many of us are suckers for a romantic story and "Lie With Me" offers plenty of meaty emotion, although told with a cool and slightly distant tone.The basic coming-out story is exceptionally well ordered and affecting. It seems very cinematic, from the opening prologue before the major flashback to the lovely scenes between the secret lovers. The two meetings between the narrator Philippe and Thomas' son Lucas later in the novel are full of poignant possibilities.On first reading, the novel seems hopefully romantic in a nostalgic way but on careful re-reading, it's easy to identify with the hidden, secret nature of Philippe's and Thomas' doomed affair. The whole novel is very French: grave rather than merely sincere; with many examples of uninteresting and unnecessary philosophizing, much of which is appropriate for a teenager; and completely aware and engaging with the negative aspects of the romantic situation.We were also vaguely interested in the LA, porn star life that the narrator alludes to. The narrator seems to have a rich, full life in many ways.A serious question arises: Is this a fake memoir, perhaps an "aspirational memoir," as Derek referred to it? The narrator is also named Philippe and the novel is dedicated to Thomas Andrieu (1966-2016). The narrator refers to his actual other novels. Besson also says "I know how lies need to be cloaked" as he lies to his mother. Maybe Philippe (in the novel) is an unreliable narrator who depends on us to join him in creating his lies.Frank pointed out the conclusion of 2019 The Guardian review by Tessa Hadley:-- We don’t feel enough of Thomas’s separate reality. When for once, after lovemaking, Thomas is actually talking and telling Philippe about his life, on the page Philippe repeatedly interrupts him, intruding fragments from his own experience as if he can’t bear not to be the centre of his own novel’s attention for even a moment. I once picked grapes too! I too learned how to milk a cow! Oh, you live there – that’s where my grandmother died! The narrator spends too much time backing into his own limelight, and in the end the whole tragic story seems narrated so as to validate and enhance Philippe’s famous-writer persona. Thomas may have been the unattainable love-object, inarticulate and desirable and other, yet everything he did turns out to have been because of Philippe, or addressed to Philippe. Well, maybe it happened like that. "Lie With Me" is full of Proustian echoes. It’s worth remembering that in Proust’s novel Albertine can’t belong to anyone, no matter how hard they try to possess her: not to the character Marcel, nor to Marcel the writer. --I'd also like to point out that in the novel, Philippe checks out the Proust "Remembrance of Things Past" from the high school library, another Proustian echo. The English title "Lie With Me" (versus the French title "Stop With Your Lies") fits very nicely with this idea of both the author and the reader joining to create this fake memoir.Compared to other novels we've read, "Lie With Me" also echoed the affair in "Call Me by Your Name" by André Aciman as well as the small-town French homophobia and violence of "The End of Eddy" by Édouard Louis. In some ways, it also reminded me of the two gay men in "Mysterious Skin" by Scott Heim, who take very different approaches to their gayness. We all rejected Elle magazine's calling of the novel "a French Brokeback Mountain."If you continue to question my idea that the plot is unoriginal, I can point out two movies in the same vein.Steve K. pointed out that the movie "Summer of 85" ("Été 85") is a 2020 French-Belgian drama film written and directed by gay director François Ozon, partly based upon the 1982 novel "Dance on My Grave" by Aidan Chambers is a very similar French high-school story. "Summer of 85" is available on Amazon Prime Video.Lloyd pointed out that the 2016 French film “Being 17” ("Quand on a 17 ans") also picks up the theme, set in the same area of France and involving high school students who live on farms. It's written and directed by gay director André Téchiné (who also directed "Wild Reeds"), and is available on Amazon Prime Video.On a personal note, I was irritated by the random and completely unnecessary paragraph breaks in the text, which got worse as I noticed them more and more.

Whilst I agree that the characters might’ve deserved more development, I cannot deny that this is a fantastic read. I felt the initial excitement of their first date, the loss Philippe felt when they separated, and the unresolved questions between the both of them. I felt the heartache, the pain, and the grief at the end and it made me incredibly sad. I wish I could read this book again for the first time.

A story about the courage to change, missed opportunities, doing what is expected, and in retrospect, trying to make sense of all that's transpired.When I learned of the film "Lie with me", I bought and read the book, which is something that I like to do because I enjoy the comparison. Much to my surprise, and delightfully so, there were details and nuances in character building in the film that I totally missed in the book. I had to read sections several times to understand the dynamics, it's a book that one should savor.The author nailed it with the dynamics of agrarian life. Having been raised in a rural, farming region, I'm most familiar with the burden of growing up as the heir apparent to an ancestral life and title. And, life under a microscope. Like in story, there are the brave who make a stand and the best of it, while others flee never to be seen again.

Two very different young men have a surprising affair. This story is captivating and realistic in so many ways. It has plenty of twists and turns and kept my attention. I'm sorry it ended.

As stated by the publisher, this is a work of fiction, yet the novel unfolds as a memoir—even to the dedication by the writer to the object of the story, an “in memoriam” sharply up front.Much as I was anxious to read this story, so lauded as to be the French Call Me By Your Name, I was continuously disappointed. (Though I had problems with the title, no less. While catchy and intriguing, it is no tale of illicit sex nor of an adulterous romp.)In fact, through the whole first two thirds of the book I was more than frustrated, disappointed, and wondering when something truly touching is going to occur. Which doesn’t. The last third of the novel is the power punch... but not really because of the characters themselves. It is the anguish perhaps of a host of readers suddenly brought from the shadows into the light... a despair that I believe, for thousands upon thousands, is a complex and undying misery/mystery of the what-ifs we endure: if only I had, we could, or we did. Lost to time, and the business of living: so many vacuous, unfulfilled lives, never realized to their full glorious joy and potential. Ending then, as an utter and complete human desecration.The greatest problem I had in the book was the lack of description of the persons involved, and to me, an almost utter lack of “emotion” in all that happens. It was as if looking through the whole scenario done at more than an arm’s length away. It may be true what does one know of love at seventeen, that wouldn’t knock you off your feet later at forty, or sixty... when the past cannot be cherished as it should have been when unfolding, and we only later remember it with more than a deeply felt loss.As well, we truly don’t seem to get a handle on Thomas, who he really is, or what he feels (as if even himself didn’t have a clue—thus making his last letter to Phillippe almost non-genuine, as if concocted by someone else, who never previously appeared in the story in the first place. The two pieces do not match). And what do we know of Thomas, even barely described physically, except to find out he has about twenty moles on his back... and this alone is enough to be rather repugnant instead of endearing, though he is mentioned to be somewhat muscular, but not even that is explored as an item of interest, except he was revealed to us as being wildly attractive. And a person who didn’t for me really come to life. Not to add, there was even an overt lack of the normal mention of their possible sizes (desirable, or the lack thereof) of the two boys’ male members, which alone would often keep two guys coming back for seconds at that age, in love or not—but “love” in any case here is just not a thing of discussion. It was just a vague series of getting togethers, and of what things they did at the time not really expounded upon; though I wasn’t looking for pornographic details, just indications of how truly enthralled they were with each other (the way of the eyes up close, mounds of the pecs, ridges of the bellies, bulk of the arms, patterns of body hair, striations of the neck, etc.), which should include the physical, as well as other differences, for sure. And cause each to be more indelibly etched into their desires and memories... long past the last embrace. That which made them special, each to each.Then, there is Phillipe himself. Again, relatively non-descript... and for all the wonderment of his years-after ruminations, well, he neither comes across as very genuine. After all, he went on to others and escapades, as a matter of course, and with little regret or second thought. No great burning torch-bearer seems like. But there is still for most of us the lingering wonder of what one considers “first love,” and that often is a haunting forever. Only if it were that deep, he surely would have made more than a few attempts to recapture it, or bring it to a close more distinctly. He had the means, but lacked the fortitude?Nonetheless, the end results I believe are the chords that are most striking. How many of us live empty, futile lives, still starving for that one we’ve either dreamed of, never had, or once tasted... and it somehow couldn’t be or become. That is the tragedy: so many lives lived in unnecessary anguish. But as it is, one can never have what one never meets. Though if once met, and then touched and gone—almost worse than if never having met, or to ever have loved at all. I know. And the vacuity of the ever-after is enough to consider what Thomas did, and how. Why breathe in an empty room—when you are especially well past your prime, poor and alone... no one to care with or for? The final song for so, so many.