Lie With Me: A Novel

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

“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.

Philippe Besson is a prizewinning 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 Lie with Me, a #1 French bestseller. His novels have been translated into twenty different languages.

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. She previously translated Lie with Me, a novel by Philippe Besson.