We drive at high speed along back roads, through woods, vineyards, and oat fields. This love, existing behind the closed doors of a small French town, is not for public consumption. 'But readers have been touched, I believe, by the dazzle of first love and by the social impossibility of this love,' Besson says. Lie With Me is not the typical story you expect to see selling the 120,000+ copies that it's gone on to do. In France, the book was a #1 bestseller, which surprised Philippe Besson, he admits. It's your first time it's exciting, certainly, but is this how it's supposed to feel? With time and practice, you learn what to expect in a relationship, but when you're in high school, as are the two boys engaged in the secret romance that is the heart of Lie With Me, you're still very much figuring it all out. There's the fervor - feelings so intense they burn into every waking thought - but also the questions, the bewilderment. One of the best novels you'll read this year was actually published in France in 2017. Translated by the actress and author Molly Ringwald, Lie With Me by Philippe Besson brilliantly reminds readers of the joys and agonies of love.
