IN THE ABSENCE OF MEN: A Novel, by France's Felice Picano

IN THE ABSENCE OF MEN: A Novel
PHILIPPE BESSON (tr. Frank Wynne)
Scribner (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$12.99 ebook, available tomorrow

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: From the author of the international bestseller Lie with Me comes the tale of an affair between an aristocratic teenager and a soldier, as they discover the possibilities and perils of first love.

Summer, 1916. With German Zeppelins on the skyline, the men of Paris are off at war. For Vincent, sixteen and still too young to fight, this moment of dread is also a moment of possibility. An electrifying encounter with Marcel, an enigmatic middle-aged writer, draws Vincent’s desires out into the light. As he’s taken under Marcel’s wing, Vincent begins a dangerous affair with Arthur, the son of his governess and a young soldier on leave. Together, they share a secret that everyone seems to know and yet everyone remains silent about.

In this stunning portrait of young love, Philippe Besson depicts a young man who plays by his own rules and is not afraid of who he is. In the afternoons, Vincent is mentored by Marcel, the great novelist, in the city’s opulent cafés as they draw the judgment of society. And at night, he hides Arthur in his bedroom as the two risk everything to be together. Their affair initiates them into a world of pleasure and shields them from the encroaching war. During this magical week away from the trenches, Vincent shelters Arthur with happiness, reassuring him, “Nothing will happen to you.”

Tender and harrowing, In the Absence of Men captures how exhilarating and heart-crushing it is to fall in love for the first time.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Tragedies hardest to endure, that produce the most emotional stress in me, are stories whose endings we know are coming while the characters do not, and we can do nothing to stop their devastation. This is that story writ tight and tart.

I'll say now that it takes a giant pair to use Marcel Proust...In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust!...as a character guiding and mentoring, in a platonic way, your PoV character. It could, you know from the off, go horribly wrong, end up derailing your story, cause the beau ideal of a reader for your story to scoff, nitpick, judge, and tut his way through it because—well—hubris much?

That was me as I approached the read. I left it without the tutting, but with reservations.

I loved the setting, Paris during the Great War as they knew it, and will always resonate favorably with first gay love stories. I'm glad Author Besson did not make Proust more than a controlling mentor, I think that would've overpowered any positive feelings anyone could've developed for the story. As it was, Marcel's controlling side wasn't foregrounded, but was there in story-appropriate places. It's up to you how you feel about an older man leading a teen through the terrifying, obscure, all-consuming first experience of Love by a man for a man. I know I wish to gawd he'd been there for me to consult and be guided by!

I think most of what takes place in the under two hundred pages of the story is defined by brokenness, by change that can't be slowed or processed therefore controlled, by the absolute certainty of war: nothing survives unscathed. Arthur, Vincent's governess's son, is the love of Vincent's young life. He is sexually attracted to Vincent, he is just enough older...and rougher...to make their love passionate and fulfilling, and he is away to war amid all the changes accumulating in their lives.

Herein my half-star off's origin. The wartime separation means a good deal of what's happening is epistolary. I'm sad to say that, despite the words being lovely and the device being central to the story's core of reality, this shift in mode brought the momentum of the read too far down. It is undeniable that this is a feature not a bug...how could a war-set love story not separate its lovers?...and represents the most natural and logical evolution of this pair's inevitable trajectory, but it still just stopped me in my tracks. Recalibrating my pace cost me some emotional investment in the men's love story.

The twist did not surprise me, but did affect me profoundly. Some sniffling and a modest dampening of my pillow might have occurred. I'll never tell.

I'm very, very glad I read the story; I think Translator Wynne rendered the French he found into seamlessly readable English that feels almost as though it's not translated; but there's that botched downshift from fifth to second that juddered me a hair too much, caused a bit of excessive mental transmission wear, for me to get all the way to five stars.

Definitely a read I recommend all the same.