Lie With Me

A beautiful, shattering novel about desire and shame, about passionate youth and the regrets of age.

Olivia Laing, bestselling author of CRUDO and THE LONELY CITY

A timeless love story. Molly Ringwald's translation is as clear and beautiful as the story it depicts. You'll read it in a night, but its exquisite heartbreak will linger.

David Ebershoff, author of 'The Danish Girl'

This gorgeous, aching novel captures all of the fear and freedom of young desire. . . may well be the best gay love story in contemporary fiction. I dare you to read it without crying.

Christopher Bollen, author of 'The Destroyers'

The uncanny thrill of Philippe Besson's Lie With Me rises up from Molly Ringwald's elegant translation with the intensity of meeting a stranger on a train who tells you a single unforgettable story and then leaves. And his voice haunts me still

Alexander Chee, author of 'How to Write an Autobiographical Novel' and 'The Queen of the Night'

A lovely novel, a painful story of love and loss. . . Lie with Me succeeds as a novel because of Besson's graceful writing, beautifully translated by Ringwald. Besson is a gifted stylist, and he infuses Philippe's story with the right notes of sadness and longing.

NPR

Lie With Me is an exquisite whisper that lingers long after you've finished reading it

Kevin Kwan, author of 'Crazy Rich Asians'

This is a gorgeous fever dream of a book. Ringwald's translation does elegant justice to Besson's balance of beauty and despair, and to his interrogations of memory and longing. Lie With Me positively glows in the dark.

Rebecca Makkai, author of 'The Great Believers'

A bittersweet love story, told from the perspective of a gay man remembering his first romantic affair as a teenager in a small town in the south of France in 1984.

Wall Street Journal

At first erotic and joyous, ultimately elegiac and haunting, Lie With Me is a deceptively slender book as big as life itself

Rumaan Alam, author of 'That Kind of Mother' and 'Rich and Pretty'