Owing principally, but not exclusively, to the stark dedication with which it begins and the crushing letter with which it ends, Philippe Besson’s eighteenth book, just published in the United States as “Lie with Me,” will be received as a mystery of genre. Is it a novel? (That’s what it says on the cover.) Is it autofiction? (The author, after all, is French.) Is it a memoir? (The narrator is a successful writer named Philippe and, like Besson, was born in the drab village of Barbezieux in 1967.) Is it just messing with us? (“Barbezieux doesn’t exist.”) Whatever “Lie with Me” is, it took Besson his whole life to write it, and, when he was done, he thought that he would never be able to write again. The other day,…
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The New Yorker (Digital) - 1 Issue, May 20, 2019