Years later, the film director Patrice Chéreau told me (knowing nothing of this drama): People who die from being crushed sometimes do it on purpose. They throw themselves under the wheels of cars. It’s particularly true when the accident seems to be incomprehensible, when everyone is convinced that it could have been avoided. He even had a character in his last film, Persecution, say something along the same lines: “It suits everyone to believe in an accident. It’s less embarrassing than a suicide.” 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' I doubt that my lover will come to me, since he’s the one who insisted on this wall of silence. The other students would surely not fail to notice if he by chance greeted me, if he happened to say hello, even casually. Because, as I said, we ran in very different circles, a crossing, even an accidental, furtive one, was inconceivable. It was clear to me that it was out of the question to take even the slightest risk.

I guessed that it was not the first time for him. His movements are too sure, too simple not to have been practiced before with someone else, maybe with many others. I’m on the playground with everyone else. It’s recess. I just got out of two hours of philosophy ( Can one assume at the same time the liberty of man and the existence of the unconscious?), the kind of subject we are told can show up on the bac, the French end-of-high-school exam. I’m waiting for my biology class. The cold stings my cheeks. I’m wearing a predominantly blue Nordic sweater. A shapeless sweater that I wear too often.

I add that I almost had a little brother. My mother became pregnant seven years after I was born, but the pregnancy didn’t go to term. The miscarriage happened very late, almost in the sixth month, and the ordeal left my mother drained and given to despair, though she never said a word on the subject. (No, not even one—such remarkable discipline.) He would have been named Jérôme or Nicolas. Often I think of this little brother I never had. Thomas says: You see how we come from different worlds. Worlds that have nothing to do with each other. Lie with Me is a 2005 Canadian erotic drama film directed by Clement Virgo, based on the 2001 novel of the same name by Tamara Faith Berger. The film stars Lauren Lee Smith and Eric Balfour. Its plot concerns an outgoing, sexually aggressive young woman who meets and begins a torrid affair with an equally aggressive young man, which brings a strain on their personal lives. The film contains graphic, unsimulated sexual content. [1] Most of the time, he arrives at school at the last moment and leaves as soon as the bell rings. He hardly exits his classroom. A beautiful novella/memoir. Besson insists it is fiction, but the novella itself is replete with references to the main character denying his novels are actually memoir and each time he is totally lying. If this is fiction, Besson is a master. He created a beautiful and utterly believable story.The book covers the first love of our narrator who is named, like the "novelist", Philippe, and his reintroduction to that lover's story 20+ years after he left. Besson magically captures the ephemeral beauty of first love, which in spite of that ephemerality, remains with us forever because it is the only love we ever have before heartbreak makes us too cautious to be fully vulnerable. The story's end, many years later reached by coincidence or fate breaks the heart into smaller bits. There is nothing surprising or revolutionary here. Rather it is a relatable tale, filled with feelings most of us have had, told in the simplest yet most lyrical way. It is simply lovely. I listened to the audio, and thought the narrator, Jacques Roy, was excellent. Read more

There’s no chance either that he’s heard the praise the teachers have given me: we’ve never been in the same class. Sometimes it happens by the sea. When the beach grows empty, at nightfall. After the children’s summer camps have gone. All over the sands a shriek goes up, saying that Capri is over. It was the city of our early love, but now it’s over. Over. 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' He imagines an ascension, some kind of epiphany. He believes me to have a brilliant destiny, convinced that within our little community nearly forgotten by the gods, there are only a few chosen and that I’m among them. A slender, sad, acute novel... absolutely excellent Sarah Perry, bestselling author of THE ESSEX SERPENT and MELMOTH

What did you think of the way the author played with truth and fiction? Does the book change if you know that it’s a memoir rather than a novel?

And finally, who remembers the C terminals? They say S today, I think. Even if this initial does not represent the same reality. These were the classes in mathematics, supposedly the most selective, the most prestigious. The ones that opened the doors to the preparatory classes that in turn led to the big schools, while the others condemned you to local colleges or professional studies or vocational school or just stopped there, as though you had been left in a cul-de-sac. I have no idea that one day I will write books. It’s an inconceivable hypothesis. If by some extraordinary chance the idea happened to cross my mind, I would have chased it away. The son of a school principal, an imposter? Not only that, all the girls are in his orbit. They circle him, constantly seeking his attention. Even those who feign indifference do so only to win his favor.At seventeen, I don’t have a clear awareness of the situation. At seventeen, I don’t dream of a modern life somewhere out there, in the stars, I just take what’s given to me. I don’t nurse any ambition, nor do I carry around any resentment. I’m not even particularly bored.