Nataliya's Reviews > Lie With Me

The stories of young star-crossed lovers have sustained popular literature for centuries, speaking to the heart and pushing all the right buttons. And yet something about this acclaimed story rang false and left me a bit unsatisfied.

You see, it quickly veers into the predictable melodrama, preparing for the gut punch ending from the get-go and yet becoming a bit trite and formulaic. Had it been a movie, it would have had the requisite monochrome soulgazing to tinkly music, complete with wistful voiceover.

This is a story of a doomed love affair between two adolescent boys in the mid-1980s France, one of whom is determined to keep it secret and the other one … well, he’s destined to become a writer and don’t you ever dare forget it (I swear, it feels like the narrator needs to bring up that he is a writer on every other page, ad nauseum, lest we forget). We know from the beginning that the two boys part ways, and the story itself begins as one of them — the writer — runs into the son of his erstwhile lover and learns the tragic story of the man who had left him in his youth.

And then he gets his long-awaited closure — in the written form, no less.

You see, this is the book that ultimately rests on the feeling of closure, on validation, on affirming the great human fallacy — the desire to matter, to be vindicated, to get the answers we crave for that inner peace. After all, losing a great love of your impressionable youth without as much as a goodbye is hard, it eats at you, it brings up all the what-ifs and may-have-beens.

And so this book becomes that closure that we want, the closure that confirms that - yes - you mattered, that - yes - it was all ultimately revolving around you, that - yes - your choices were true and special and right, that - yes - you weren’t the only one still reeling from the long-lost love, that - yes - it was all reciprocated and real and validated.

The neat closure to show that the impact from the secret affair reverberated through both men’s lives, and that the one who cruelly left realized his mistake in not staying true to himself, and that the young love remained in his heart, and that denying your desires leads you to solitude and unhappiness, yadda yadda yadda. It’s an unsubtle moral lesson without taking into much consideration the societal and family and religious and responsibility pressures that led to Thomas’ choices - and all those had plenty of room for subtlety.

And this is a disservice to Thomas’ character, reducing him to a road not taken, a character in a conventional melodrama, with a quick tearjerker ending on a letter that admits the ultimate guilt of self-deception, with the intention of making the reader wistfully sigh about the fallacy of such choices in the silent stoic tragedy of Thomas’ life — all that added too many visible marionette strings to the story that otherwise could have been touching in its eternal simplicity, told in a bit of a monotone (author’s or translator’s — I don’t know and can’t really judge as I don’t speak French).

It’s not a bad book — but it’s also a book that does not add anything new to the story it tells, resting heavily on the final letter of confession and validation, stating yet again that repressing your nature is unhealthy and rife with consequences — and unfortunately little else. Had it been just a short story consisting only of the first part — that of the boys’ adolescence — it would have been stronger and sweeter, more impactful and much less unnecessarily melodramatic.

3 stars. Middle-of-the-pack serviceable story, but ultimately easily forgettable.

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Oh, and while I’m at it, let me get these off my chest:

(1) “Back then there were no cell phones, so I had to call him at his house.” Who is this story told to — future generations? I trust we all know about the lack of cell phones in the mid-80s, without the need for explanation.

(2) “His was the first male sex I held in my hand, other than my own.” I don’t know if that’s the writer’s fault or the translator’s — but does anyone else loathe the “sex” euphemism for genitalia? Every time you call a penis “male sex”, a cute fluffy kitten dies a gruesome death somewhere.

(3) “Carnivorous kisses.” I refer you to the placenta cook book after this expression. (view spoiler)[25 Placenta Recipes - Easy and Delicious recipes for cooking with placenta!. (hide spoiler)]

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Also posted on my blog.