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In the Absence of Men, by Philippe Besson (2007, transl. 2025)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: In 1916 Paris, a queer teenager experiences love for the first time in very different relationships with a middle-aged writer and a soldier on leave from the War.

Review: Once again, Philippe Besson has demonstrated his knack for exceptional, short, melancholic, queer fiction. Cont.

Literary memoirs are my favourite: I am halfway through Laure Murat's essay on Proust's In Search of Lost Time, which she realised when she read it aged 20, described her milieu (the French aristocracy), was partly based on members of her family, & is as relevant now as it was then. She walks us through the parallels & is pitiless about their flaws. She was rejected when she came out as lesbian & feels a kinship with Proust, who was gay.
#LGBTQ

Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.

#findingjoy
#14639769

2024 wrap up:
41 books read
24 fiction
17 non-fiction
Favorites: More Work for Mother, Mother Tongue, Poverty by America, The Best of Everything

Finally managed to find a pretty enough edition of In Search of Lost Time. Definitely going to be one of my 2025 reading projects 🥰

#Litsolace #Midsummersolace

What are you grateful for today?

I'm so very grateful for this wonderful Litsy community. It's such a safe, supportive group of people. 💚📚💚

2/5
First, I think these poems were collected mostly from personal letters Proust sent to friends, so they were not intended for publication.
Because of this, they are not polished, they tend to be simplistic in the rhymes, but also they contain a lot of personal references or references to characters from that period, which can make their context difficult to understand.

Phenomenal ending to an unreal work.

Mind-bendy, ultra-reflective and fascinating, feels like something written in the future.... Pretty often I'd say to myself "Yeah this is wild stuff," especially in the second half. Somehow he managed to end this thing without letting me down at all. I love it.

It seems now therefore that there is no humiliation so great that one should not put up with it easily, in the knowledge that after a few years our buried faults will be no more than an invisible dust over which will smile the smiling and blossoming peace of nature.