In the Absence of Men

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Quem gosta de Proust vai se deliciar com essa homenagem ao autor (e alguns temas de sua obra), que se passa na época da I Guerra Mundial e que vai desde os horrores da guerra até as sensações delicadas e evocativas de encontrar um primeiro amor, para apenas perdê-lo para a brevidade do tempo em que ele pôde realizar-se.

My lips continue their descent, stop as then reach your lower abdomen, where the flesh is the firmest, where strength can be measured, where power resides and where, even so, it seems most vulnerable, where the risk is most evident because your defenses are down. I feel I can put myself in their situation or have indeed experienced something similar in my own lifetime so that I can empathise. 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. This is because the chapters that were about Vincent and Marcel were alternating with the chapters about Vincent and Arthur.You can feel the tragic pieces in this story prior to them happening, but the heartache still arrives.

This allows for an epistolary section in which the three characters, via a trialogue, speculate on love and war. It is the summer of 1916 and, with German Zeppelins on the skyline, the men of Paris are off at war.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. The first novel by Besson, he had to send the manuscript to seven or eight publishers eventually settling on the publisher Julliard.

He has spent time as translator in residence at the Villa Gillet in Lyons and at the Santa Maddalena Foundation.

The second part of the novel is a series of letters between Vincent and Arthur and Vincent and the unnamed author. The English translation received positive reviews from several publications including Kirkus Reviews, and the Washington Post. 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. You find that you could send whole fragments of text to relevant people in your life because those fragments tell them precisely the things that you dare not tell them or wish to tell them. I realize that Besson's newest novel, Lie With Me, is getting all the press at the moment (partly due to Andre Aciman's correct praise, and Molly Ringwald's translation).

Your immediate instinctive reaction is to touch me, to press against me, to impress your body on mine, to wait for the moment when they are symbiosis, the moment when marriage makes them one flesh. The room is filled with our silence, filled with the sounds of bodies brushing against each other, with the sighs of mingled mouths. I would like to believe that Polish translation is to blame, to some extent at least but unfortunately, this is the second book by Besson and I didn’t like either of them. In the midst of the terrifying din, in the indescribable panic, we fought side by side, advancing the front line.This book follows a moderately similar format in that it is told in two parts but this time along a liner timeline rather than in two different time periods. Idealmente, a realidade seria mesmo assim, mas não me parece, portanto, exige-me uma suspensão da descrença que não possuo.