Thank you @scribnerbooks for sending me this copy of Lie With Me by Philippe Besson to read (and of course, as the front cover tells us, translated by Molly Ringwald 😜). Despite my reservations over slapping a celebrity translator on the cover and whether it was actually a decent translation or simply a marketing ploy, I was pleased to discover that Ringwald actually has done a good job with it - now if only we could get ALL the translators’ names on the covers of books, please, and not just because they were in The Breakfast Club!
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Lie With Me is a short (160 pages) but intense novel of an equally short but intense love affair between two teenage boys, and their subsequent lives after the relationships ends. I have not yet read Call Me By Your Name but I have seen a few ‘If you liked that, read this’, except it’s set in France rather than Italy.
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As it’s so short, there’s not that much to say on it except that I did form an attachment to the characters in a short space of time, and I had my heart broken by Thomas’ development. Besson paints a devastating portrait of someone unable to accept themselves for who they are, and in contrast to Philippe it is even more so.
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A tender and passionate coming of age story that I would recommend!