In the Absence of Men, by Philippe Besson

After reading and loving Philippe Besson’s Lie With Me a few years ago, I was eager to try his earlier novel In the Absence of Men, which I picked up in the Strand’s used book section without initially realizing it was his debut. I was primed for more Philippe Besson—same emotional punch, same quiet intensity. Instead, In the Absence of Men feels like a talented writer still figuring things out in public.

Set in Paris during the summer of 1916, the novel follows 16-year-old Vincent, who finds himself entangled in a curious triangle: a cerebral, almost mentor-like relationship with Marcel (yes, that Marcel), and a physical, emotionally charged affair with Arthur, a soldier on leave from the war. A love triangle in wartime Paris? Count me in. The potential is there—youth, desire, war, mortality, longing. On paper, it’s exactly the kind of material that should work.

And yet… it mostly doesn’t.

The biggest problem is Vincent himself. He’s not just precocious—he’s implausibly so. The way he articulates his thoughts, especially in the long, epistolary middle section, feels less like a teenager discovering himself and more like a seasoned philosopher holding court. The letters are drenched in ornate, hyper-dramatic language that never quite rings true. Real people don’t talk like this, and certainly not 16-year-olds, no matter how gifted. I can suspend disbelief, certainly, but only so far.

Worse, Vincent is kind of unpleasant without being interesting. He’s vain and self-absorbed, and there’s very little beneath the surface to justify the intense devotion he inspires in both Arthur and Marcel. There's no shortage of books in which the older man is enthralled by youth, like Death in Venice, and perhaps this is what Besson might have been aiming for - youth as a kind of gravitational force, something older men are drawn to—but it never quite feels right. Instead, the relationships feel a little hollow. Not enough work was done beforehand to justify such passion and obsession.

There are flashes of what Besson would later become. Some passages are genuinely beautiful, especially the sections involving Arthur. He's haunted by the war, vulnerable, and emotionally relatable in a way the others weren't. In fact, if you strip away Marcel entirely, and you might have had a tighter, more compelling novel.

I'm personally not crazy about books that are comprised of letters between the characters. I'd rather it just be presented as a novel. In the letter section, you end up reading about emotions rather than feeling them. And the twist at the end? It's pretty clever, and it does hit with a certain sting. Still, it feels more contrived than truly earned.

All that said, this is clearly the work of a writer with talent. It’s also worth noting that Besson was writing openly queer fiction at a time when it wasn’t exactly a safe commercial bet, which gives the novel a certain historical weight.

In the end, In the Absence of Men never really became the devastating thing it wanted to be. If Lie With Me is Besson in full command, this is him still searching for the right voice, and occasionally trying a little too hard to sound profound while doing it. Not a bad novel, but go read Lie With Me instead.