Welcome to Litsy!

June #readingroundup

Lie with me was my favorite read of the month, but I did also enjoy Ministry of Time, The Darkness Outside Us, and Margo's Got Money Trouble!

It was an okay reading month.

Gorgeously heartbreaking.

This is my second Besson book and now my favorite of his. The story of two boys who carry on a secret affair in highschool and then go on to live their lives separately, one going on to pass as a straight man the other openly gay.

I love how the novel is laid out and the language is beautiful. Big impact in a slim volume.

I cannot decide if this book is trying to tell me to go back and finish 1984 like I should be, or letting me know it is a natural progression and I just live in 1984 today.

Tagged book second favorite of the year!!!

Thanks to #GoldenAgeCrimeClub @Mitch for The Franchise Affair and #NaturalLitsy @AllDebooks for 🦋 book.

Drinking coffee this morning and I‘m in tears again. I stayed up to finish this beautiful written book, got to the last page and sobbed into my pillow trying not to wake my husband. Set in rural France in 1984, two teenage boys begin a secret relationship that can have no future. The writing sparse yet impactful.

Great little novella about first love written from memories and a chance meeting , saw a book vlogger on YouTube recommending it and picked up in the library on a whim , sometimes that‘s the best way of finding a little gem isn‘t it . Beautiful and highly recommended. Another book bingo read. Could be a full line for January 🙌#bookspin #doublespin #bookspinbingo @TheAromaofBooks

‘ i cannot stand the idea that he could be taken from me. that i could lose him. i discover for the first time- poor idiot- this stabbing pain of love.‘ 4.5/5 ; loved the poetic writing style of the author.

Well, I finished this short autofiction about the author's first doomed love with another boy yesterday - I more or less read it in one sitting - and I got teary-eyed at the end, without feeling emotionally manipulated. Loved it.

(picture of Barbezieux (where the protagonists live), in the Cognac region of France, from Wikipedia)

I saw the trailer for the film inspired by this novel the other day and thought I'd check out the book. I'd been meaning to read Besson for ages, and books are generally better anyway😄
Apparently, the actress Molly Ringwald translated it into English? It's about a gay writer who comes back to his native village, where he meets his first love's son.

(picture is a still from the film)

Thank you for this book @Reggie it was a lovely change of pace from a book about war. In this novella we see the beginnings of a love affair between two young men in France in 1984. They need to keep their meetings secret and we see how the weight of carrying this secret will impact them. A really moving story that reminded me of Duras.
(Photo of a spring posy given to my daughter)

What a beautiful book.
Sometimes I felt the writing like a stream of consciousness, but in this case it perfectly suits the novel.
It's a powerful story even if it's sad... I didn't imagine the end so I'm still a bit shocked.
I think I will read more by Philippe Besson.
This is part of his life, now I'm curios about his fiction

My last read in 2020 turned out to be one of the very best I read in years. Unbelievable! LIE WITH ME by Philippe Besson (translated by Molly Ringwald) is a touching, tragic love story that speaks so powerfully of longing, repression, identity, secrecy, lust, desire, and love in its barest, purest, precious form. This book can be read in one sitting because it's less than 200 pages but the emotional voyage is simply astounding. 👇

A love story about 2 teenage boys who meet and fall in love in the 80s. And it just about undid me 😭 Really lovely translation #ReadingEurope2020 #France

I feel like I have become a little cynical as I felt impatient with this seemingly self indulgent writing about two boys in 80‘s France who share a secret love affair that sets them on 2 very different paths. But like all good stories this one sends a storm into the desert of my heart and quenches the dry cracked earth. (Who‘s self indulgent now?!!! Lol) I very much liked this book. A very Marguerite Duras‘s The Lover meets The Reader, pick!

Hooked by second page.

Flawless! A successful writer reviews his teenage years after catching a glimpse of someone he thinks he recognizes during an interview, Thomas. Gorgeous and heartbreaking, the narrator explores what is scary and what is reassuring about physical relationships when you're a teenager, what they can turn into, and how he and Thomas embarked on a journey they never really came back from.

More of a novella than a novel; it was extremely short. However, all of the emotion and feeling was present within the short story. I won't soon forget this one. Tragic. #audiobook

Switching gears to this short #audiobook translated from the French.

“...[accepts an] absence that is not death...” A strange state of limbo to be in but applies to all kinds of relationships. #bookstagram #relationships #amreading

Only apparently simple, this book is absolutely stunning in its contained prose, its evocative nature, its unabashed rawness. Mr. Besson manages to tell a coming of age story with tenderness - a story that ultimately manages to become so much more with its devastating conclusion. It will continue to haunt me for a while.

Things that make you go hmmmm? Goodreads decided to recommend Pet Sematary because I enjoyed Lie With Me? Often their recs are fairly good - but what on Earth would link Lie With Me (a coming of age/reflection story about being gay in the late 80s in France) and Pet Semetary?

Fucking spectacular.

Simply stunning. This feels like a memoir than a novel.