The French are infatuated with autofiction, a form of fictionalized autobiography written in the first person with a main character who has the same name as the author. The genre blends fiction with what appears to be fact, but readers can never be sure, unless they are intimately familiar with the author. Autofiction tends to obsess over the narrator’s role as an author documenting their own life and experiences.
Lie with Me by French novelist Philippe Besson is a prototypical example of autofiction. The book was a number one bestseller in France. In an intriguing prologue, Besson, a successful novelist in his forties, describes being interviewed by a journalist in a hotel lobby in a provincial city in France:
…I allow my gaze to wander to the people walking across the lobby. I watch their comings and goings, and invent the lives of these people in my mind. I try to imagine where they are coming from and where they are headed. I’ve always loved to do that, to invent the lives of strangers in passing. It could almost be considered an obsession. I believe it started when I was a child. I remember it worrying my mother. “Stop with your lies!” she would say. She used the word “lies” instead of “stories,” but nevertheless, it continued, and all these years later, I still find myself doing it.
Right after that passage, Besson notices a young man leaving the hotel. He is dumbstruck because the man appears to be the doppelgänger of his former lover Thomas, whom he last saw more than twenty years ago when he was a teenager. He shouts “Thomas!” but the young man doesn’t react, so he jumps out of his chair and follows him outside. He taps the man on the shoulder, and the man turns around to finally face him.
What a wonderful start to a novel! I was hooked. It’s a short novel (160 pages), so I read it in one sitting. There are only three chapters to the book, set at different years: 1984, 2007, and 2016.
It turns out the boy is the son of Philip’s former lover. Chapter one flashes back to 1984, describing how the boys met. Thomas Andreux, who is handsome but closeted, makes a pass at Philip, and they begin to have a clandestine affair. Thomas demands his discretion. Philip agrees to keep their relationship a secret.
Philip wonders why Thomas chose him, the principal’s son, an effeminate boy who is routinely bullied by his homophobic classmates. Thomas tells Philip that unlike the other boys he will escape from this small provincial town.
He tells me something I did not know: that I will leave.
That my existence will be played out elsewhere, very far from Bartezieux, with its leaden skies and stifling horizon. That I will escape as one does a prison. That I will succeed.
Besson’s narrative is meandering and introspective, building upon small moments from memory in a disjointed but cumulative manner to heighten emotion. His story is reminiscent of another coming-of-age gay novel set in Europe, Call Me By Your Name, but without Anciman’s peachy eroticism. It instead focuses on the narrator’s habit of inventing the lives of others, or lying, as his mother calls it.
Those lies help Besson’s autofictional narrator—and the reader—achieve empathy for others. The lies also help Besson understand his own life. It is why we tell stories about others. After all, narrators can only be known by their relationship with other characters. To tell our story, we must tell other people’s stories. Besson frequently interrupts the narrative to tell a story from his distant past, even from his early childhood. Such stories reveal telling moments about his character, but they also serve to heighten the emotion of the present story he’s telling.
About two-thirds through the book, we finally come to chapter two, which jumps to 2007, more than twenty years later. Philip is now a successful writer, traveling to a bookstore in Bordeaux for a reading. It is then that he encounters Thomas’s son, Lucas, who could be a twin of the young Thomas. Even the name Lucas is a coincidence, since Philip has used it often for characters in his novels. Philip and Lucas return to the hotel, and they chat for several minutes while Lucas waits for a train.
Lucas fills in the blanks on what happened to Thomas in the intervening years. We expect Thomas’s story to be sad, and from Philip’s perspective it is. But Philip also realizes that they are no longer who they once were. Time has transformed them.
We jump to chapter three, and nine years have passed. Lucas gives the narrator a letter that Thomas wrote to him in 1984 but never sent. Lucas departs, and Thomas reads the letter privately. It’s devastating.
Lie with Me is a poetic reflection on a former lover, a man who never came to terms with his own sexuality. The powerful emotions Besson evokes give testament to his talent as a writer, his mastery of the autofictional form, the sensitivity of his empathetic imagination, and the beauty of his minimalistic prose. It’s a stunning performance.
The French title of this novel is Arrête avec tes mensonges, which means “Stop with your lies.” I prefer the English title, Lie with Me, for the obvious double entendre, but also because it suggests the complicit nature of storytelling. Readers must engage with the narrator’s “lies” to achieve the emotion that Besson intends to evoke.
Kudos to actress, writer, and translator Molly Ringwald for the smooth, lucid translation. Yes, that Molly Ringwald.
Lie with Me
Philippe Besson
Scribner
The Lie is a candid memoir of a southern man, an IT director for a global economic consulting firm, who comes out as gay late in life after being married more than twenty years and having two children. In midlife he confronts the fraudulent identity he has crafted for himself, exposing the lie he has told everyone, including himself. After his marriage dissolves, he navigates the path back to health, stability, and a new blended family. He also learns how to create genuine friendships with people who appreciate him for his authentic self, including his ex-wife and daughters.
Although more and more people are coming out late in life, there are relatively few books on the subject, so Dameron’s memoir is fresh and different. Given the thousands of families affected by such traumatic revelations, an honest, understanding look at the subject is sorely needed, and Dameron’s book certainly fills that need. It’s a courageous and trailblazing book.
In the prologue, Dameron reveals that he was the victim of identity theft. Cyberthieves used his photo for a global catfishing operation designed to scam women and men on online dating sites. Given Dameron’s own lie about his sexual orientation, it’s a remarkable irony that his photo was chosen to deceive numerous other people looking for love. Dameron later confesses that perhaps for decades he catfished not only his wife but himself. He pretended to be someone he wasn’t.
Dameron was raised by a single mother, a Catholic homophobe whose husband abandoned her. He married his college sweetheart Katherine when they were both in their early twenties, despite knowing that he was gay. They had two daughters Olivia and Claire, and moved from North Carolina to Virginia to Massachusetts. It is there, after more than twenty years of marriage, that Dameron begins to experience a crush with straight coworker Enzo. He also becomes addicted to illegal steroids, obsessively lifts weights, gains fifty pounds of muscle, and pops Valium pills that he steals from his wife, all banal pursuits. Meanwhile, his marriage and his life begin to unravel.
After Dameron tells his daughters that he is gay, his youngest daughter Claire questions him one night:
“How long have you known you were gay?” she asked.
“Since I was a child.”
“Then why didn’t you come out then?”
“The world was a different place. Being gay wasn’t an option,” I said.
“But why did you wait so long?”
Dameron ponders that question, the crucial question of the book, and then supplies several half-hearted answers: not wanting to disappoint others, not wanting to be like the father who abandoned him, not wanting to be hated, not wanting to go to hell. The truth: He lied for so long that he didn’t know how to stop, and he didn’t wish to destroy everything that lie helped to build.
Once Dameron comes out and separates from his wife and daughters (about halfway through the book), his story becomes one of recovery. I found the second half of Dameron’s memoir to be poignant and emotionally rewarding. Dameron finds a basement apartment in the home of two lesbians who help him during this difficult transitional period. He also finds help and genuine friendship from a “Coming Out Later in Life” support group. After a string of unsatisfying dates, he later meets his new husband Paul, a father of three. Together they work to build a stable blended family.
For deeply personal reasons, I really wanted to like this book. Like Dameron, I also came out late in life, in my early forties, after marrying and having two daughters (one named Olivia!). There were many passages in The Lie that were eerily familiar and brought back painful memories. I could have been one of the genial guys in Dameron’s support group. In fact, if I had found the courage, I also could have written a remarkably similar memoir.
But this is Dameron’s story, not mine. And it’s a painful story. Dameron deserves praise for his unflinching honesty. For much of this book, he’s an unsympathetic narrator. His self-centeredness also results in a myopic portrayal of his wife and daughters, the ones most directly affected by his lie. This is their story, too. When they are given a voice, it’s generally mocking or hysterical. Only later in the book, in chapter twenty-seven, does Dameron rectify this imbalance. In a blistering confession, he takes a hard look at his catfishing, gaslighting, and dishonest relationship with his wife Katherine. He acknowledges that Katherine taught him more about honesty—and forgiveness—than anyone he knows. Bravo!
Later, Dameron writes that he can’t undo the wrong or change the past:
The only way I know to make amends is to live in the truth and to be humble with those I’ve wronged—Katharine and my daughters—and through the sharing of my tale, to give those I’ll never meet the chance to speak their truth as well.
Dameron is not a polished prose stylist like Besson (and translator Ringwald), but his story ultimately builds to a moving finish. Both books employ a non-linear narrative, hopping back and forth across decades. In Dameron’s case, the loopy structure may be due to the fact that several chapters originated as stories published in The New York Times, Salon, Boston Globe Magazine, and other publications. Consequently, his memoir his highly selective; there are vast stretches of his life that remain unexplored territory.
Dameron employed many of the autofictional techniques that Besson used in Lie with Me. In an author’s note that prefaces the book, he calls the book a work of “creative nonfiction,” and admits that he changed the names and identifying physical characteristics of people and re-created dialogue. Only in its final three chapters does The Lie evoke strong emotions. That’s partly due to Dameron’s clumsiness as a writer, and his self-centered focus during his freefall. When Dameron regains his footing, lives authentically, and begins to make amends, his book finally shines.
The Lie
William Dameron
Little A (Amazon.com)
cool lima bean 