In the Absence of Men

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Một cuốn sách đẹp đẽ, rung động, giàu chất thơ và trần đầy nhục cảm, hy vọng sẽ có những cuốn sách khác của Philippe Besson được dịch.

Then there are books I love because they completely absorb me into their world, with characters I feel drawn to, and almost feel like I care about their stories in real terms. In the midst of the terrifying din, in the indescribable panic, we fought side by side, advancing the front line. Besson’s prose is exquisite at conveying the emotions that accompany human desires, longings, fears and failings.

In part one, during the summer of 1916, a French teenager named Vincent de l'Etoile experiences an intense love with a soldier named Arthur Vales who is on leave from the French front of World War I. Estamos em 1916 e Vincent dorme a noite toda, até ser manhã, com o filho da empregada, com a maior das descontracções. Arthur and Marcel are also related, but I won't give that away, since that was the ultimate surprise ending.

You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. But when you have finished reading Lie With Me, I would urge you to dig deeper into Besson and enjoy prose as you rarely find it nowadays. The novel is a Platonic discourse on love, which never really reaches any great depths because Vincent is such a superficial young lover. It is the summer of 1916 and, with German Zeppelins on the skyline, the men of Paris are off at war.Dur de lire ce livre sans être bouleversé, touché, remué, dur de ne pas laisser couler des larmes devant une telle intensité, une si magnifique pureté. I must remember the awkwardness, took the botched gestures, the abruptness, the missed beats, because there too are signs of love. The second part is written in the epistolary format, since both Arthur and Marcel leave Vincent in Paris. He is arrogant, full of himself and at the same time there is no charm behind it, no cheekiness even or merciless honesty, anything that would make me believe in the friendship between Vincent and Proust, much older than the protagonist. In the Absence of Men is a stunning first novel to discover this pride season: in its daring in representation and celebration of gay sexuality, in the beauty of its prose and in its delicacy of feeling.