Lie with Me (novel)

Lie with Me (French: Arrête avec tes mensonges, lit. 'Stop with Your Lies') is a novel by the French writer Philippe Besson.[1] It was published in 2017 and received critical acclaim. It won the Maison de la Presse Prize. It was translated into English by Molly Ringwald under the title Lie with Me and was lauded by English-language reviewers.[2][3]

First edition (publ.Éditions Julliard)

Set in 1984 in rural France, in the small town of Barbezieux, the novel recounts the teenage love affair between the narrator and his schoolmate Thomas Andrieu.[4]

Besson, in a piece published in January, 2020, writes about the significance to him of the novel The Lover by Marguerite Duras.

When, thirty years after my first reading, I threw myself into writing Lie With Me, it’s The Lover that I placed in front of me, on my desk, in plain view. The 1984 edition, yellowed, dog-eared, stained. I knew that I was going to write about my seventeen-year-old self, about what happened the year I turned seventeen, and I have never forgotten that that was the year I read The Lover for the first time. But there was something else: I had understood that I was going to call forth my memories, like Duras did, that I was going to write about the memory of adolescence, like Duras.[5]

The book was later adapted into a movie under the same name, which premiered in the Angoulême Film Festival on August 27th, 2022.[6][7]