When French writer Philippe Besson was introduced to Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron at a dinner five years ago, it was friendship at first sight. Besson recalls that he and the woman who would become France’s first lady chatted about her favourite literary figure, Emma Bovary.
The choice of Gustave Flaubert’s tragic heroine who is passionate and bored with the banality of provincial life but trapped in a mediocre marriage, was not, Besson thinks, an accident. After all, it is no secret that Brigitte was married with three children and working as a teacher in the provincial northern city of Amiens when she began a relationship with Emmanuel Macron, 24 years her junior.
“She told me she thought Madame Bovary was a masterpiece, that she loved Flaubert’s style, his power and the fact that from the first line you are at the heart of the story. I believe she identifies absolutely with Bovary,” says Besson, speaking from Los Angeles, his home away from Paris.
“People don’t have favourite books for no reason; we like them because they speak to us, they speak of our intimate experiences.”
What also struck Besson was how attentive Emmanuel Macron – the former corporate banker who had just been appointed finance minister – was to his wife.
“I was used to having dinner with ministers and they like to hold court and speak and everyone pays attention to them. But Emmanuel was different, especially with his wife. He looked at her often and gave her lots of attention; I had the impression of an egalitarian couple. There was none of the machismo one finds in politics and public life,” he says.
Despite his 19 novels, literary prizes, screenplays, translations, newspaper columns, regular radio slots and the adaptation of his second novel, Son Frère, into a film by French actor-director Patrice Chéreau in 2003, Besson is not known in the English-speaking world. Now his acclaimed 2017 autobiographical novel, Arrête Avec Tes Mensonges (Stop With Your Lies), translated by the US actor Molly Ringwald as Lie With Me, will be published in the UK next month. Work is under way to turn the book – a French Brokeback Mountain – into a film.
The French title comes from Besson’s mother’s admonishment when, as a boy, he would imagine stories about the lives of those around him. She chose the word “lies” not “stories”, he notes.
Lie With Me, which was a No 1 bestseller in France, follows a first love between two teenage boys, Besson and Thomas Andrieux, a fellow pupil at his lycée in the Charente in south-west France. Besson is an awkward youth shunned by schoolmates because his father is their teacher and also, he writes, because of his outmoded “Jacquard pullover”. He has known he is homosexual since the age of 11, but is astonished when approached by the blond-haired Andrieux, a magnet for all the girls in their school. The pair enjoy a series of sexual encounters, but Andrieux insists their relationship, like their meetings, must remain secret. At 18, Besson leaves for university; Andrieux stays to work on his family farm. Decades later, Besson has a chance meeting up with Andrieux’s son and learns how life played out with terrible consequences for the man he never stopped loving.
Like Édouard Louis and Didier Eribon, Besson writes of the travails of growing up homosexual in provincial France. Unlike Louis and Eribon, Besson enjoyed a happy childhood with middle-class parents. Education was the vehicle that transported all three away from stifling mores and morality.
Besson, who had a successful career in human resources, says it was easier telling his father he was homosexual at the age of 18 than announcing he was giving up his well-paid job to become a writer at the age of 30. “I was lucky to have liberal, loving, understanding parents, I didn’t think the revelation [of my sexuality] would be a problem for them. I had this intuition it wouldn’t go too badly and it didn’t,” he said.
“But my father wanted my brother and me to succeed and through education take what we call in France the social elevator. I had a career and a good living. It was difficult for him to understand I was resigning to live, he feared precariously, by writing.”
In 2016, Macron asked Besson to join him on the presidential campaign trail, which the author thought would be “an extraordinary adventure”, a new experience, and material for a book.
“I told Macron he had no chance of being elected president. None at all. I was upfront about it. I said: ‘You will be beaten.’”
“To be president in France, you had to have 30-40 years of experience in politics, been elected mayor somewhere, be from the right or left. That’s how it’s always been done. And here was a man, 38 years old, never elected to anything, who was right and left. Honestly, I told him his chances were virtually nil.”
Besson still said yes to Macron’s offer. “For a writer, it was a thrilling experience being in the frontline of the campaign, and I told myself that it wasn’t a problem if he wasn’t elected in the end.”
His subsequent book, Un Personnage de Roman (A Character from a Novel), was published a year after Macron proved him wrong.
“I saw the impossible become improbable, the improbable become plausible, the plausible transform into reality,” Besson wrote.
Today, Besson speaks to his friend Brigitte regularly; they talk of “literature and life”, he says. The president is, for obvious reasons, less available. Has power changed either of the pair?
“I am still close to both of them, but Emmanuel has less time now. Power has given him a sort of seriousness, but in terms of personal relationships nothing has changed. He still has the same energy, attention to others, the same humour.
“With Brigitte, it’s a very strong friendship. We see each other often and I talk to Brigitte at least once a week. I was on the phone to her the day before yesterday.”
While admitting his relationship with the Macrons is “close”, Besson insists that he is not part of the president’s power circle.
“I’m not a politician nor an adviser. That doesn’t interest me. I give him my impressions, my feelings and my views. I absolutely do not give him advice.”
Friendship has come at a price. Last year, when Macron appointed Besson to the coveted post of French consul in Los Angeles, the writer found himself in the critics’ crossfire as Macron was accused of regally dispensing favours to “courtier” friends. Diplomats argued the consul’s post was for those in public service, not presidential pals. In March, France’s state council, the country’s highest administrative authority, annulled the appointment.
Besson says he was deeply hurt by the sudden and unexpected personal attacks that appeared in the French media. “There’s a tradition of writers as diplomats in France, so I certainly wasn’t the first, but it was like I had been put in a box as a writer and I’d dared to come out of it. The row was deplorable, violent and caricatural. Of course I was hurt,” he says. “But it’s not the end of the world. I’m a writer. I shall do what I do. I will write.”
Q&A: Molly Ringwald on translating Philippe Besson’s novel and her love of French culture
You’ve written books before, but Lie With Me is your translation debut. How did it come about?
Valerie Steiker (the editor who acquired the rights to Lie With Me in the US) was formerly at Vogue. She edited an essay I had written about living in France when she was at the magazine and knew about my familiarity with the French language and culture. She proposed the project and I thought it would be an interesting challenge. I read a couple of chapters, immediately felt drawn to the material and felt I could do it justice.
What attracted you to this novel?
I’ve always felt drawn to LGBT culture. I’ve often spoken about my regret that the films with which I’m most strongly associated don’t have any (openly) gay characters. I suppose I liked the idea of helping to make a love story between two teenagers accessible. The fact that the time period (80s) also happens to be the same as the John Hughes films makes it even more poignant for me.
You describe yourself as a lifelong Francophile. When did this begin and how has it shaped you?
My mother idolised the American Francophile [chef] Julia Child, and I think some of that must have rubbed off on me. I also studied French in high school and became a devotee of the new wave cinema of the 60s. It’s hard to describe exactly why you love a language or culture, you just do or don’t. Like a taste in music…
What are you reading?
I’m just finishing up Mythos, the Greek myths retold by Stephen Fry, which I’ve enjoyed immensely.
What are you working on and do you plan to do more translating?
I’ve been working on a book of essays, and a screenplay that I will direct. I’m finishing a film I’m acting in and also acting in a television series [Riverdale]. I’m also working on a web series with a friend. And… probably something else that I’m forgetting about. I don’t have any plans at the moment to do more translating, but I’m open to the idea. I enjoyed the process very much, even though it was incredibly time consuming.
• Lie With Me by Philippe Besson, translated by Molly Ringwald, is published by Penguin on 5 September (£8.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
