As the day ends, I am the amusing child in the tub with his bare feet and legs, stamping on the grapes to crush the skins. It’s the end of the season, and everyone gathers around a long table. People are speaking loudly, drinking, laughing, playing the guitar, for the last time before the Spaniards leave to return the following autumn, or possibly never. For me the separation is heartbreaking. Later I sit in the distillery in front of the stills and copper pipes, waiting for the smoke to escape. It’s called “the angel’s share.” I am the child who is waiting for the share of the angels. My father was amused to have his son participate in this ritual, but he had already repeated many times over that he didn’t want this life for me. No land or field work, no manual labor. It was out of the question for him that I should be a member of the working class.

I figure that the only real acceptable objection to his reluctance must be material, concrete, almost trivial. I say: My parents work, they’re almost never there, we won’t be bothered. I’m counting on his fear of being found out. He says okay, that he will come. In later years, I will often write about the unthinkable, the element of unpredictability that determines outcomes. And game-changing encounters, the unexpected juxtapositions that can shift the course of a life. 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 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? Lie with Me' succeeds as a novel because of Besson's graceful writing, beautifully translated by Ringwald.

A deeply moving depiction of first love, both tender and elegiac. John Boyne, bestselling author of 'A Ladder to the Sky' At twelve or thirteen years old, I didn’t go to see the films intended for my age, the animated films of Walt Disney for example. I didn’t like action films, or science fiction, or even the French teen romantic comedy La Boum, which every teenager knew by heart. They didn’t interest me. No, I chose the films for old people. Films by François Truffaut, André Téchiné, Claude Sautet, scandalous films too, like The Wounded Man by Patrice Chéreau and Possession by Zulawski. When I admit this to Thomas he says: That doesn’t surprise me. You can tell from the clothes, the high-waisted ultra-skinny acid-wash jeans, the patterned sweaters. Some of the girls wear woolen leggings in different colors that pool around their ankles.

Aïssaoui, Mohammed (3 May 2017). "Prix Orange du Livre: les cinq finalistes". Le Figaro (in French) . Retrieved 10 September 2023. This is a perfect mix of a summer read set in Greece and a edge-of-your-seat suspense novel…” - Red Magazine If I had not been abandoned by my friends, if he had failed to convince his to leave him behind, this moment would not have taken place. It could have almost never happened. Philippe often thinks about the divide between knowing things from books and knowing things from real life. Is one inherently better than the other? Despite the intensity of their attraction, from the beginning Thomas knows how it will end: “Because you will leave and we will stay,” he says. Philippe becomes a writer and travels the world, though as this “tender, sensuous novel” ( The New York Times Book Review) shows, he never lets go of the relationship that shaped him, and every story he’s ever told.

The rain continues to pound against the roof of the shed. We are alone in the world. I’ve never enjoyed the rain so much. 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 wonder if my grandmother could have committed suicide. I don’t know. I like to believe that she did it, as it would have been the sole act of freedom in her entire existence. A woman who spent her whole life making children (seven in twenty years), raising them, and then being relegated to remain in the shadow of a celebrated and capricious husband. This Year's Call Me by Your Name... While the starring peach of Call Me by Your Name was the perfect metanym for that lush and gauzy tale, Lie With Me unpeels like a springy orange. The boys' relationship is bare but segmented, each encounter entirely isolated from the others, with only a thin membrane to keep all that tart juice from bursting out. . . [A] moving and graceful novel Vulture