Lie With Me

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 -- Andr 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. -- Lauren Collins * 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-sicle 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 i

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.