To escape, the slaughter, we drag ourselves into the holes and try to huddle into the dirt waiting for the moment when the firing stops. The inclusion of Marcel Proust in the novel is fascinating, adding literary cameos to the scenes already steeped in decadence. The first part focuses on the main character's burgeoning relationships, one physical and intensely passionate, the other intellectual. I hope others of the author's work will be translated for the enjoyment of those of us whose college French is not adequate for reading it in the original.

Deixa-te de Mentiras” - o seu livro mais conhecido em Portugal - é um livro que me encanta e que pontualmente me irrita com a mesma intensidade. As I'm doing some reading summaries of 2018, I have decided that In the Absence of Men is the greatest disappointment of the year for me. 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. This friendship and mentorship helps him grow more confident in his love for the soldier until news breaks about the true connections between these Parisian gay men.In the Absence of Men is a short, bold and original novel which beautifully captures the romance and amorality of gilded youth. It also dares to introduce an asthmatic middle-aged Proust into its masterfully manipulated plot and invents a series of deeply felt letters written by him to the novel’s young protagonist, Vincent de l’Etoile.

Like Michael Cunningham’s homage to Virginia Woolf in The Hours and Jean Rhys’s to Charlotte Bronte in The Wide Sargasso Sea, Philippe Besson’s extravagantly praised first novel pays tribute to Marcel Proust.Prix du Premier Roman de l'AD de la Sarthe - Union Nationale Culture et Bibliothèque pour Tous (UNCBPT) - Site officiel". In 2001 the French edition of the novel won the Prix Emmanuel-Roblès and the first winner of Prix premier Roman de Culture et bibliothèques pour tous de la Sarthe.

In the course of one week—at literary salons, at the Ritz, in cork-lined rooms—Vincent launches an intense friendship with the celebrated Proust, while at his parents’ house in Paris he embarks on a sensual journey with Arthur Vales, the soldier son of a family servant, on leave from the front. In the Absence of Men is a novel by Phillippe Besson published originally in French by Éditions Julliard in 2001.I realise that this is what it means to be lovers: using the same words to speak of the same things though one has never heard the other use them; these random similarities, this remarkable intimacy. Yes, I was able to predict it, but only at the last minute, when I realized that all the math added up. O amor - e as cenas de sexo - entre um adolescente - filho da alta burguesia -, de 16 anos e um professor de 21 anos (soldado na frente de batalha da I Guerra Mundial e filho da empregada da casa) está construído de uma forma pouco realista para o quotidiano da burguesia parisiense do início do século. Let’s start with the fact that the narrator of the novel, Vincent, is one of the most unpleasant characters I can think of – and in a very dull sense. O livro é triste, o sentimento que o anima é exaltante, mas a morte ronda todos de uma forma muito próxima.