Lie With Me - Philippe Besson
I really enjoyed Besson's In The Absence of Men earlier in the year, so I was excited to read this one when my partner recommended it to me. Thematically both the novels share some ground, but it's very obvious that Besson has grown and matured as a writer in the 16 years between his debut and this novel.
Lie With Me is a book of distilled longing. Philippe and Thomas are both each other's 'one who got away', and that shared regret transcends time and geography and forms the basis for one of the most mundane, human, moving tragedies I've read in a long time. This book is really beautiful.
There's a moment in In The Absence of Men where we learn the true identity of the anonymous writer Victor has befriended that hits like a gut punch. To call it a 'twist' or a 'reveal' would be to reduce a shocking, moving, impactful moment down to tropes, to cheapen it through laziness. Lie With Me contains a similar moment that I won't spoil here, but which caused me to let out a long breath that I didn't know I'd been holding and to put down the book for a few minutes while I digested it. I felt a lurch in my stomach as I read it, having not seen it coming at all. It's very rare that I get a genuine physical reaction from a novel, and I always treasure the books that manage to induce it.
One of my goals for 2025 is to read more fiction in translation. Only one other of Besson's novels is available in English, but that seems to me like a very good place to start.