Review by New York Times Review
UNDERLAND: A Deep Time Journey, by Robert Macfarlane. (Norton, $27.95.) A series of lyrical, unnerving explorations, from ancient forests to urban catacombs to caves of ice, that probe humanity's sometimes wondrous, often malign, relationship with the world beneath our feet. ON EARTH WE'RE BRIEFLY GORGEOUS, by Ocean Vuong. (Penguin Press, $26.) The poet's fiction debut is an experimental, highly poetic novel whose structural conceit is ostensibly a letter written from a son to his mother. The book is brilliant in the way it pays attention not to what our thoughts make us feel, but to what our feelings make us think. THE CONSERVATIVE SENSIBILITY, by George F. Will. (Hachette, $35.) Will, after a long career as a public intellectual, sums up his thinking about the meaning of conservatism in an argument that includes history, epistemology, culture, religion, politics and constitutionalism. GREATEST HITS, by Laura Barnett. (Europa, paper, $19.) A British novel that uses the creation of a retrospective album to explore a woman's tempestuous life in music. WOMEN'S WORK: A Reckoning With Work and Home, by Megan K. Stack. (Doubleday, $27.95.) As a foreign correspondent, Stack covered wars and reported from dozens of countries, but as a new parent she was overwhelmed. This enthralling account of her relationship with the women she hired to help her casts a self-critical eye on the often exploitative labor of motherhood. L.E.L.: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated "Female Byron," by Lucasta Miller. (Knopf, $30.) In the early 1820s, Landon's lightly erotic verse, published in a weekly gazette under the initials "L.E.L.," was all the rage in England. Miller's fascinating biography argues that the prolific poet, who died in exile in Africa, represents a "missing link" between the Romantics and the Victorians. LIFE OF DAVID HOCKNEY, by Catherine Cusset. Translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan. (Other Press, paper, $15.99.) Cusset, a former French professor at Yale, entertainingly fashions a novel from the known facts about the life of Hockney, the artist whose paintings of poolside California now fetch astronomical sums. EXPOSED, by Jean-Philippe Blondei. Translated by Alison Anderson. (New Vessel, paper, $16.95.) This elegant novel explores the bond between a middle-aged teacher in the French provinces and the ex-student, now a famous painter, who asks him to pose. LIE WITH ME, by Philippe Besson. Translated by Molly Ringwald. (Scribner, $25.) A glimpse of a young man in a hotel leads the narrator of this tender, sensuous novel to recall his first love affair, as a teenager in rural France, with a taciturn farmer's son. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 23, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
In Besson's (In the Absence of Men, 2003) award-winning novel (120,000 copies sold in France), a middle-aged writer recalls his teenage first love, prompted by the impossible appearance of a young man who is the spitting image of his past amour. Back in 1984, the object of 17-year-old Philippe's secret (he thinks) and burning crush, a schoolmate he's never met named Thomas, shocks Philippe by asking him on a date. So begins their thrilling clandestine relationship. As he looks back, Philippe reminds readers so often of his passion for inventing stories and the fallibility of his memory that it's hard to believe he's telling anything but the truth. Discovering a therapeutic and devastating new ending to their story in the present, Philippe considers the absurd alignments that become life's defining moments. There's much book-to-film-star appeal in this moving, well-plotted tale: Elle dubbed it ""the French Brokeback Mountain""; there's something of Call Me by Your Name's Elio in Philippe, who lives in the books he reads and writes; and actress and writer Ringwald ably translates.--Annie Bostrom Copyright 2019 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Besson (In the Absence of Men) rehashes familiar tropes about secret teenage gay romance in this moving but unoriginal novel. Novelist Philippe, who shares many biographical details with the author, falls into a reverie about his first experience of romance when he spots a young man who looks just like his first lover from a couple decades earlier. Philippe, a high achieving 17-year-old student, frets about being gay in 1984 Barbezieux, France. Thomas Andrieu, a much cooler student and the son of a farmer, unexpectedly approaches Philippe with an invitation to lunch. Eating far away from the crowds, Thomas boldly offers a clandestine relationship. Philippe and Thomas pass notes with places and times for their meetings and pretend to not know each other otherwise. The adult Philippe relishes the memories in richly described erotic encounters. Their initially silent trysts blossom into conversation and love, but always remain secret. Thomas abruptly leaves town after school, leaving Philippe to wonder what happened until the chance encounter with the young doppelgA¤nger provides insights and sets the stage for a tragic culmination. Despite the predictable plot, Besson's writing and Ringwald's smooth translation provide emotional impact. Agent: Benita Edzard, Robert Laffont. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A bestselling French writeror at least the novelized version of a bestselling French writerreckons in older age with a passionate affair he had as a young man.Written in an almost confessional first-person, Besson's (His Brother, 2005, etc.) latest is a French bestseller set in the mid-1980s in a small, "gray" Bordeaux town "doomed to disappear." The narrator, an ambitious high school student and son of the principal, falls deeply for a fellow student, the "slender and distant" Thomas Andrieu, a character in the novel but also apparently an actual person to whom the novel is dedicated. Thomas is beautiful but not worldly; he's a sensitive, stunted stud who doesn't see a way out of the town. Different as he and the narrator are, they nonetheless initiate an affair that takes place in hidden rooms on campus and at the narrator's home when his parents aren't around. Besson's initial reluctance to put names to their sex acts ("I am enthralled by his sex," the narrator writes, as if it's 1822) feels musty, though the author does get more descriptively honest as the story progresses. The love between the two feels real and memorable, and Besson is a thoughtful writer who can strike home with vivid imagery, particularly as he and Thomas age and grow apart and Thomas' son, Lucas, develops a friendship of sorts with the narrator. The only quibble is that this book, which is deftly translated, doesn't exactly feel like a novel; it reads like a memoir. In fact, the only thing that keeps it from being garden-variety autofiction is Besson's willingness to wink at his decision to make fictional an experience that seems to be based in reality.An insightful reminder that in the years before gay dating apps zapped the mystery out of erotic pursuit, love between even mismatched men could be lifesaving. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
