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A lightly fictionalized true story?
A manipulative ruse designed to bond reader and novelist?
The trick, whatever it might be, need not be vivisected.
Of course I prefer boys, he tells us slyly.
Thomas likes his solitude …
He speaks little, smokes alone.
The boys meet for lunch, and then, over the next few months, develop a quickening rhythm.
Both are set in provincial, untrafficked European towns in the last years or days before the AIDS crisis.
Each features a sheltered intellectual and a worldly seducer.
And alas,Lie With Memakes no reference to sexually available stone fruits.
I slip down the straps of his tank top, the narrator explains.
It seems to me that there is no other gesture more sensual, more stirring …
The intimacy is ripe on the page; this is a novel is horny for itself.
Did this really happen?The question that so irritates novelists clearly titillates Besson.
Could I have made this story up from scratch?
Could I have turned an erotic obsession into a passion?
Yes, its possible.
Ultimately, these games are not a distraction from the romance and nostalgia but very much the point.
Think about it: How much of our own teenage years do we invent?
Probably … a lot.
Oddly, for a work in translation, the punning English title works a bit better.Lie With Me.
Take me in your arms.
And lets agree to tell our own stories however we damn yo.
