I am immediately struck by the beauty of the language, of the linguistic imagery, of the book; whether this is present in the original french being skillfully rendered by the translator, or the translator alone, I do not know. The book’s protagonist narrates in the present tense, creating an immediacy and lending intensity to what is being described.

The story starts in 1984. It is told from the point of view of a seventeen year old french schoolboy (Phillipe) with a crush on another schoolboy (Thomas Andrieu).

The author never uses crude words like “cock” or “dick”, nor clinical words like “penis”, instead using a quaint, yet evocative phrase “his sex”. There is enough description to capture the moment, and we understand how Phillipe feels when his first encounter is over; the sense of abandonment is equated with the feelings of a child losing sight of his exhausted mother at the fair and the fear that he will never see her again.

The thoughts that Phillipe has and cannot express to Thomas reflect the growth of the boy and the tension on their relationship. They are utterly relatable to me.

Phillipe’s initial lack of confidence grows as his sexual awaken quickens him; Thomas sees Phillipe’s eventual emacipation and escape from their home town and his own fate of running his father’s farm.

The boys relationship grows over the school term, with Thomas being reserved but slowly opening, and Phillipe slowly becoming more confident, until school ends and they go their separate ways for the long summer break.

The yearning for a life passed by and the nuanced expression of grief of these multidimensional characters, this story did leave me with a few tears at it’s ending.

Today, I’d like to slap this seventeen-year-old kid, not because of the good grades but because of his incessant need to please those who would judge him

Page 8

All my life I have been a people pleaser, too scared of causing offence or conflict; mollifying people who judge me. It’s only recently that this behaviour has changed and my filters have become a lot more permeable: I put a lot less thought into what I say than ever before, meaning that I don’t mentally edit what I want to say until there is nothing to be said or what I do say is meaningless.

nothing touches me more than cracks in the armour and the person who reveals them

Page 22

Strong yet vulnerable men are sexy!

…I wondered if this oppressive religious ideology – the deliverance from evil as a divine principle drummed in day after day, the biblical message of fixed gender roles that his mother internalised, the sanctification of stable relationships as practiced by this unblemished family – could have exercised an influence on a child forbidden too rebel

Page 61

This paragraph spoke directly to me and my experiences; my religious upbringing imprisoned me, and I couldn’t even see the bars. Believing that a relationship, a marriage, should be only two people and that sex was sacred, constrained me and I forced those constraints onto my husband. He may have felt the same, but it was never discussed, so I assumed that he felt the same.

I also feel for the child who could not rebel. Who never found his voice – and silenced others who threatened his equilibrium. I remember how I felt when I came out as gay, the thrill of rebellion, and how quickly it fell into being normal. Coming out as non-binary and becoming a eunuch reignites my rebellious side – and I love it!

It seems crazy not to be able to show our happiness. Such an impoverished word. Others have this right, and they exercise it freely. Sharing their happiness makes them expand with joy. But we’re left stunted, compromised, by the burden of having to always lie and censor ourselves.

Page 77

I believe that public displays of affection are crucial in a relationship, and that gay relationships suffer because we cannot be open and honest in the expression of our feelings. We are always less than ourselves, with family, colleagues, and sometimes even with friends. We don’t get to share our joy. The world is changing, well, my corner of it anyway, but we still have to think “is this a safe space to hold hands?” or “can we kiss here?”. And that’s in the super-liberal United Kingdom. There remains most of the world where being gay is not safe – where it can be lethal.

Jealously, though not an entirely unknown feeling, is nevertheless foreign to me. I’m not possessive, figuring that no one should have exclusive rights to somebody else, as if a lover were a piece of property.

Page 78

Funny that I should read this so close to a conversation with a polyamorous friend who said almost exactly the same thing! I’m going to explore this now another time!

I also know how much of yourself you need to leave behind in order to look like everyone else

Page 105

As a child and young adult I hid my gayness until my early twenties. That felt like a long time of hiding.

I hid my non-binary nature until I was nearly fifty. That really was a long time of hiding.

That’s a lot of me that was never visible to anybody.

How much of myself can I reveal now?