Holden Sheppard

It seemed to confront the idea of being a man or not.

And so that was incredibly hard to tease out.

I would start at the beginning, which is actually... So the novel begins in 2007.

So it's technically in Chapter 2, but it's not actually termed Chapter 2.

But you just get this fleeting moment that is depicted where the narrator sees someone and he sees him in the distance and he goes...

I know this person and it can't possibly be this person, but I'm sure this has reminded me of something that happened a very long time ago.

And it's an incredibly powerful moment.

He's in the middle of an interview with a journalist and he just interrupts what he's doing and races out after this person.

And then we jump through those timelines after that.

So chapter one is 1984 and 1984 centers on two French boys who meet, they're living in a small village outside of Bordeaux, so Barbazur.

It's a country town.

They're gay.

They don't really know they're gay.

And it's a beautiful, beautiful love story in 1984.

Yeah, and my own life.

Like, it was really moving.

So I actually, this is an incredible novel, if it's a novel, because there has to be some element of memoir to this.

Yeah, so it's Philippe Besson, and he's written as Philippe, but at the start as well.

So the other boy is Thomas André, and he is actually, at the beginning of the book, you have in memory of Thomas André.

So there is some element of reality to this, even though as the narrator, as Philippe, as the older man, he says something about, I don't write about my own life, but he clearly has done that in this book.