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The Advocate´s Best Gay Novel of 2019
A New York Times Book Review Editor´s Choice
O, The Oprah Magazine´s Best LGBTQ Books That´ll Change the Literary Landscape in 2019
The Wall Street Journal´s Ten Books You´ll Want to Read this Spring
Out´s Best Queer Books of April 2019
TheSkimm´s LGBTQ+ books to celebrate Pride

THE #1 FRENCH BESTSELLER

"Stunning and heart-gripping." -André Aciman, author of Call Me By Your Name

The award-winning, bestselling French novel by Philippe Besson-"the French Brokeback Mountain" (Elle)-about an affair between two teenage boys in 1984 France, translated with subtle beauty and haunting lyricism by the iconic and internationally acclaimed actress/writer Molly Ringwald.

We drive at high speed along back roads, through woods, vineyards, and oat fields. The bike smells like gasoline and makes a lot of noise, and sometimes I´m frightened when the wheels slip on the gravel on the dirt road, but the only thing that matters is that I´m holding on to him, that I´m holding on to him outside.

Just outside a hotel in Bordeaux, Philippe chances upon a young man who bears a striking resemblance to his first love. What follows is a look back at the relationship he´s never forgotten, a hidden affair with a gorgeous boy named Thomas during their last year of high school. Without ever acknowledging they know each other in the halls, they steal time to meet in secret, carrying on a passionate, world-altering affair.

Dazzlingly rendered in English by Ringwald in her first-ever translation, Besson´s powerfully moving coming-of-age story captures the eroticism and tenderness of first love-and the heartbreaking passage of time.

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Lie With Me Chapter One
1984

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Besson, Philippe
Philippe Besson is an author, screenwriter, and playwright. His first novel, In the Absence of Men, was awarded the Emmanuel-Roblès Prize in 2001, and he is also the author of, among others, Late Autumn (Grand Prize RTL-Lire), A Boy from Italy, and The Atlantic House. In 2017 he published Lie With Me, a #1 French bestseller that won the the Maisons de la Presse Prize, and A Character from a Novel, an intimate portrait of Emmanuel Macron during his presidential campaign. His novels have been translated into twenty different languages.

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