In the Absence of Men

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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.

Qu'il est beau ce livre, quelle magnifique histoire d'amour, que de crampes au ventre en lisant ces moments partagés unique, cette poésie unique évoquée par Philippe Besson. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to read about such triangle, what an open field for emotions, self-discoveries, finding your true colours it could be! The new edition of In the Absence of Men is a handsome edition, compact, seductive and elegantly type-faced. Because after reading it, it felt like a whirlwind piece of fiction, and it left me dazed and wondering what just happened.The second part is written in the epistolary format, since both Arthur and Marcel leave Vincent in Paris. I don't regret the fact that I strolled into the library looking for some piece of modern French literature (which is why I grabbed a book from the PQ shelves), since I was able to pick up this one. Perhaps what is most striking is the idea that the characters have real emotions too, and they are human as well, like the rest of the population.

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. In the Absence of Men is a short, bold and original novel which beautifully captures the romance and amorality of gilded youth. Sau khi đọc "Đừng tự dối mình", tôi bèn tìm những cuốn khác của Philippe Besson đọc và chỉ tìm thấy "In The Absence Of Men" là có bản tiếng Anh. I do not know, I cannot know, if all men are that same, but I have an inkling of the universal softness of the male sex.FRANK WYNNE has translated over fifty works from French and Spanish by authors including Michel Houellebecq, Patrick Modiano, Ahmadou Kourouma, Tomás González and Arturo Pérez-Reverte. The first part focuses on the main character's burgeoning relationships, one physical and intensely passionate, the other intellectual. O diário é de uma sensibilidade incrível, e traduz bem o que será um espírito de 16 anos, vivendo as circunstâncias que a personagem vive. Sem saber do que se tratava, fiquei positivamente surpreso quando percebi que o Marcel que aparecia como personagem era ninguém menos que Proust - e quando a ficha caiu, o livro ganhou mais e mais camadas de significado. A profound, yet simplistic, analysis of love, seen through the eyes of sixteen-year-old Vincent d'Etoile.

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. Because you know we have to advance at all costs, win back inches of ground from the enemy, reach the barbed wire hundred meters ahead. I feel I can put myself in their situation or have indeed experienced something similar in my own lifetime so that I can empathise. At the outset, Vincent meets both Marcel and Arthur for the first time, and their relationships develop in 7 days.Vincent, on the other hand, expressed curiosity and fascination with sex itself and Arthur’s body than the boy himself, only to then suddenly be love-struck out of the blue. 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. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. 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. It is the most sensual of silences, one which says all there is to know about who we are, what binds us, what our future holds.