In the Absence of Men

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Part Three offers the inevitable tragic conclusion and a sting in the tail that is so contrived that it strikes the reader as ridiculous. He is arrogant, full of himself and at the same time there is no charm behind it, no cheekiness even or merciless honesty, anything that would make me believe in the friendship between Vincent and Proust, much older than the protagonist. Th incessant thunder of cannon-fire flings bodies into the air, hurls bodies that are crippled, mangled, mutilated into the tracery of the shellfire. But it didn’t feel like it while reading and Vincent’s extraordinariness is enhanced by another man who fell for him – a young soldier, Arthur, obsessed with death and traumatized by war from which he escaped only for a few days or hours, into Vincent’s arms. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

Vincent greatly enjoyed both of these men in part 1, and misses them dearly through letters in part 2. It's just that I rarely encounter books of this kind that when I actually read one, I get a little shocked. Seeing that his works aroused so much interest, Philippe Besson then decided to dedicate himself exclusively to his writing. He is a two-time winner of the Premio Valle Inclán, for Kamchatka by Marcelo Figueras (2012) and for The Blue Hour by Alonso Cueto (2014). Philippe Besson admira obviamente Marguerite Duras, e este pastiche LGBT até podia ser interessante se o protagonista não fosse tão irritante e se a situação não fosse tão inverosímil.I feel I can put myself in their situation or have indeed experienced something similar in my own lifetime so that I can empathise. The urgency, dread and gravity of the situation Arthur and Vincent live through in these pages feels real to me. Not with this writing, not with these characters, not with the predictable and rather embarrassing twist in the end.

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. The room is filled with our silence, filled with the sounds of bodies brushing against each other, with the sighs of mingled mouths. 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. Because until now, that's the vibe I have been getting whenever I pick up a piece of LGBT literature.Vincent reveals more and more to Marcel about Arthur, as he also reveals to Arthur how Marcel has offered advice. Occasionally, you pick up a book not quite knowing why you chose to read it in the first place, but then gradually, page by page, you start to realize that almost every chapter tells you a little about yourself, about your life.

This novel will undoubtedly become one of the books that will never leave me and stay on my shelf until the day I die. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Maybe that’s the point, maybe it was supposed to reveal Proust’s hunger for youth he was saying goodbye to, his vanity even. Frustré par ce dénouement qui, pour moi, n'ajoute rien à la tristesse ressentie par les événements de la deuxième partie du livre, mais qui plutôt retire de la crédibilité à cette histoire pourtant si plausible et émouvante. Como conclusão diria que o modelo da obra e a escrita me encantou, a história ficou um pouco aquém mas foi um bom início de leituras neste mês do Orgulho LGBTI.Diferentemente a amizade entre esse mesmo adolescente e Marcel Proust está marcada por inúmeros sinais da obra e da vida “proustiana” que me encantaram como leitor. forward, crouch, resting on one knee on the ground, stop, aim, perhaps kill someone, set off again, hope that we are not in someone else's sights. 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. Finally, the third part is more of a conclusion, since the climactic point of the book is actually at the end of the second part, and the third part serves as a nice way of tying things together. 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.