Lie with Me by Philippe Besson
Published 2008 · 59,675 words · about 4 hours at an average pace · LGBTQ+ Fiction, Literary Fiction, Coming-of-Age
How hard is Lie with Me to read?
Lie with Me scores 47 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 48 out of 100
- Spare and exact.
- Sentence structure: 52 out of 100
- Controlled French sentences, well served in translation.
- Abstraction: 48 out of 100
- Concrete memory with a running reflection on shame.
- Information density: 45 out of 100
- Short and unhurried.
- Narrative indirection: 45 out of 100
- A writer narrating his own past with visible self-interest.
- Symbolic density: 48 out of 100
- Restrained; place carries most of the weight.
- Ironic distance: 42 out of 100
- Quiet distance between the man and the boy he describes.
- Resolution withholding: 50 out of 100
- The final section reframes rather than resolves.
- Structural complexity: 45 out of 100
- Three parts across decades.
How Lie with Me is regarded
Lie with Me holds a literary regard score of 40 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.
Where the story of Lie with Me takes place
- Barbezieux, France, 1984, the main setting