Lila Says

by Chimo

From their first meeting, the elusive 16-year-old Lila seduces Chimo with words. Is she speaking from experience or revelling in sexual fantasy? In this journal, Chimo records their meetings, offering insights into the grim urban environment near Paris where he and Lila live.

Genres: Fiction, France, Adult, Sexuality, Literary Fiction, Romance, Read For School

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Chimo is a French writer who became famous in 1997 with the novel Lila dit ça (Lila Says), which became a bestseller and sparkled controversy.

The true identity of Chimo has never been revelead. The publisher's note in the book states that a manuscript was dropped off by a lawyer and they never had a chance to interact with the author. He was allegedly a poor and young man of Maghreb origins living in the banlieus of Paris. The book is supposedly an autobiographical narrative written in slang but some people suggested he may actually be a famous writer under pseudonym. Some others suggested he may actually be Olivier Orban, the original editor of the book, or his wife (CHI - Christine Orban - M ["aime", "loves"] - O[livier]).

Reviews

[Λίνα Θωμάρεη · Rating 2 out of 5]

Το βιβλίο αυτό λέγεται ότι γράφτηκε από τον Σιμο. Το ξέρουμε διότι στα γραπτά με αυτό το όνομα αναφέρετε ο αφηγητής της ιστορίας μας. Το συγκεκριμένο βιβλίο είναι κάτι σαν ημερολόγιο και μας περιγράφει την σχέση που είχε ο Σιμο με την Λιλα, μία 16χρονη κοπέλα.
Σαν βιβλίο και υπόθεση δεν λέει κάτι αν και προσωπικά (αν όντως ισχύει η ανωνυμία του συγγραφέα) μου άφησε την αίσθηση την περιγραφή πραγματικών γεγονότων...
Η γραφή του απλή και καθημερινή με πιπεράτες λεπτομέρειες και αισχρολογιες οι οποίες με μπερδευαν προς το είδος του βιβλίου. Ακόμα και τώρα που το τελείωσα δεν μπορώ να το κατατάξω κάπου συγκεκριμένα.
πάραυτα υπηρχαν κάποιες σκέψεις και απόψεις του αφηγητή που σε άφηναν λίγο άφωνο με το τρόπο που σκεφτόταν και κατανοούσε τον κόσμο του.
Αξίζει να διαβαστεί? Δεν ξέρω... αν τύχει και σας πέσει στα χέρια ναι... ρίξτε του ένα βλέφαρο...
Για το τέλος θα κρατήσω αυτό που έγραψε και η 2η μεταφράστρια του.
"Τέλος θα θέλαμε να τιμήσουμε την ευφυΐα του Σιμό. Ποιητής, φιλόσοφος, δημιουργός εκφράσεων... ένας γλωσσοπλαστης! Μία τεχνική την οποία συχνά μεταχειρίζεται μας έθεσε ιδιαίτερα προβλήματα. Ο Σιμό διαλέγει μία έκφραση πολύ γνωστή, στη συνέχεια διαλέγει από αυτή μία λέξη την οποία συνεχίζει αμέσως με μία άλλη έκφραση ή συνεκφορα, και αυτή υπάρχουσα, χωρίς όμως να έχει καμία σημασιολογικη σχέση με την πρώτη. Ο μόνος του δεσμός είναι η κοινή λέξη η οποία λειτουργεί σαν κρίκος"

[Ferris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating, lyrical, erotic, dark, profound novel about life in a French housing project about what brings light into life, and about what snuffs it out. It is about coming of age and trying to make sense of the senselessness of life. I could not put it down, was disturbed by it, and will be thinking about it for a long time to come.

[Bernie Gourley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lila Says is the tale of a star-crossed odd couple. The lead, Chimo, is an unemployed, 19-year-old, Arab man living in a Parisian government housing complex. Chimo’s life revolves around writing stories and getting by however he can. A fair amount of the book is about living a life of poverty in the ghettos of one of the world’s most expensive cities, but the core of it is about Chimo’s relationship with Lila.

While Chimo is awkward with girls and uncomfortable in sexual matters, Lila is an exhibitionist and – it seems at first – a nymphomaniac. She is a pretty blonde girl being raised by a Catholic aunt. Over the course of the novel, it becomes less clear that Lila is a nymphomaniac, and it’s possible that she just gets excited by causing arousal in others – particularly Chimo. In other words, it’s not so clear to what degree she is having sex, versus telling erotic tall tales. At any rate, the interplay between Chimo’s repressed nature and Lila’s unrestrained nature is at the center of the story. It soon becomes clear that part of the reason Lila has chosen Chimo is because he’s simultaneously safe and interested. That is, he can control his libido but doesn’t reject Lila’s flirtations. Chimo is surprised to find that Lila doesn’t talk to any of his friends the way she does to him, and – in fact – she doesn’t talk to them much at all.

This book is hard to rate. It’s definitely rough around the edges. However, as it’s presented as the journal of a young, unemployed man with minimal education that roughness contributes to an authentic feel. I have no idea whether it’s really a case like “Go Ask Alice.” (“Go Ask Alice” was presented as an anonymous manuscript written by a teen-aged girl whose life fell apart due to drug use, but it turned out to be written by a middle-aged woman whose life experience was nothing akin to Alice’s – though she was a therapist and youth counselor and thus had access to stories of those like Alice.) However, the text feels like it could have been hand-scrawled in the ruins of an abandoned building by candle light as described. (That is, if one discounts the British slang which takes one away from the “Arab man in a Parisian housing project,” but the book was originally published in French and so the English edition translation was made to invoke the same class level in its readership.) There are even a few footnotes about the state of the pre-edited manuscript that sell the meta-story of the book.

It’s also a great oversimplification to classify the book as erotica. It’s true that there is a great deal of sexual content in the book, and most of what Lila says, except toward the book’s end, is intended to be titillating. However, the book is also about living in poverty, selling blood to get grocery money and such. Furthermore, the book’s end ventures away from eroticism and into the realm of tragedy.

I found this book to be incredibly and surprisingly engaging. I might say I liked it warts and all, but I think it’s truer to say its warts contributed to making it more engrossing. I would highly recommend it for readers who don’t mind adult themes and who aren’t attached to happy endings (no pun intended.) I don’t mean to give anything away or to beat a dead horse. It’s just that if one picks the book up thinking of it as romance or erotica, one might feel betrayed. Better to think of it as a gritty work of fiction.

[Viki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Συναρπαστική διήγηση με αξιοπρόσεκτη μετάφραση τηρουμένων των αναλογιών....

[Sharon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Set in the 90s on a grim, impoverished housing estate in Paris, Lila says is narrated by 19-year-old Chimo. It is supposedly taken from two notebooks which were anonymously submitted to a Parisian editor – just under the name Chimo. To this day the author remains a mystery, and to be honest I feel that this has generated a lot more hype around the book than it perhaps deserves.
Chino is an Arab boy and Lila is a 16 year-old blonde-haired-blue-eyed catholic school girl. Chino is fascinated by Lila – there are not many beauties like her on the Oak Housing Project, which is dominated by residents of North African decent who steal, sell blood, sex, in fact anything to try to get by. However, initially it seems to be Lila who is the sexually advanced one and pretty damn vulgar with her talk, every encounter with her is about sex, whether it be talk about what she supposedly lets boys do to her, or even tempting Chimo as she allows him to see and eventually touch her intimate parts. Chimo is shocked but intrigued.
The book is very erotic but in a slightly uncomfortable way – it always feels like there is something amiss and I didn’t feel it held any innocent young romance but it read more like porn. The fantasy scene about how Lila was raped by the devil with a smoking crimson c**k just seemed so unnecessary and took the book firmly into the porn market, losing credibility with me. The ending, I felt cemented this book as vulgar for me with its shocking and sinister twist. Definitely over-hyped by media interest over the author.

[H · Rating 1 out of 5]

The ending -- is there any question this was written by a man?

[Lilli · Rating 3 out of 5]

I disagree with the reviews: this book is not 'sexy as hell' but sad as hell.

[Kit · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a difficult read. I got the book thanks to the movie, which has become one of my favourites, so it would be a good idea to check out the original. The book is written in vernacular French, almost a stream of consciousness, anything goes writing, which suits the narrator well. Some of the lines are unbelievable, and may leave you in shock and awe, but the story becomes harder to read as you go along, if you're faint-hearted.

Having said that it's an amazing read. The concept behind the book itself, with the mysterious narrator author. The story of how the text came about in the fist place, being given to a lawyer by a mystery person, who may or may not be Chimo, makes the story all the more powerful. Did it happen?

But it doesn't matter. I doubt I'll be reading it again, even for me the book leave you a sickening gut feeling towards the end, but I don't regret of having read it.

[Zaneta Pietrzyk · Rating 5 out of 5]

I do not know how to put my feelings into words at the moment.... The writer Chimo has such an amazing mind and even if he seems so simple and it was written is such a different way that I have never read before, It was amazing and eye opening.
When I read the first... section/chapter I was mesmerised how he didn't do the usual set the scene and make a long beginning but instead he began with how he met Lila for the first time. I found it amazing and so new and raw, it was as though all the emotions could be seen. It wasn't like books are usually; dragging out the plot and making the character feelings 'confused' and all that.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone!
The ending as well.... wow. I was chocked up and I did not expect it. It was so real and so... unusual.
I love it and I do not regret buying it at all. Worth a read even if I just read it in 8 hours!

[Agnescelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little disappointing...

Lila Says is one of my favorite French movies. I wouldn't call it an erotic film. It's more of a sexually charged coming-of-age. Two teens living in a bleak place with no hope for the future. Lila likes Chimo and uses her sexuality to grab his attention.

For the most part, the movie is faithful to the book. However, there are some changes. A few of the scenes are in different order. Mouloud is much more fleshed out in the movie and Chimo hangs out with his friends more. The Devil scene carries on longer in the book. Chimo isn't a candidate for a writing scholarship in the book. His relationship with his mom isn't explored. The ending is a real downer.

Overall, the movie is more bittersweet. It gives you hope for Chimo and Lila.

[Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whether or not the book's essential origins are true or just a cover to add an air of mystery, the writer definitely writes like someone who knows two things: the desperation of poverty and just how often teenagers think about sex. Whether the author was a relatively bright 19 year old in poverty or not, the book is vivid and real and sucks you in. The stream of consciousness style can sometimes be difficult to follow, though that might just be a byproduct of the translation into English. No spoilers, but the ending is frustrating in that way where you want to scream and demand to know what happened next. All in all, very well-done, if not totally satisfying.

[K. Anna Kraft · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's extremely difficult to describe this book, because all the good words have already been taken. The world that the author depicts is disturbing, but the way that he writes it is charming, sometimes almost puppy-doggish, at the same time, and the ending is subsequently both jarring and fitting at the same time.

[Naomi · Rating 1 out of 5]

The beauty of this book should probably be credited to the translators and editors. It reminds me of 120 days of Sodom; it tries so hard for social commentary, but it's unfinished and unpolished (aside from the lovely job of the editors) and comes across more like smut.

The smut part is done well, but I like my smut consensual and of age.

[Vegard Hatteland · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is best described as a whirlwind that is short but colorful, like the short fling you had that ended as hard and abruptly as it started. It's bittersweet, like a flash of light in the dark. It's over before it even began, before you even noticed that it started it's over, but when you look back at it it might as well be the best time of your life. The action is unusual, weird even, a little shocking, but it's also filled with warmth. From the moment that Lila enters this book, which is in the first sentence, her presence is all-encompassing. She is everything, she is what lights up the sad reality of the French ghetto-like suburbia in which this short novel is placed. This is the sort of place were girls grow up to be hookers and guys grow up to be criminals, and their parents are living on social security and sit inside and watches TV all day. To come from this place is to come from no hope. The two main characters, Chimo and Lila, manages to find each other and create this place for themselves where nothing else exists, where they are the only people in the world, amidst all the hopelessness that they are surrounded by. No passage is exemplifying this better than when Lila is flashing her private parts to Chimo as he is riding through the neighborhood on his bicycle, with Lila bent over on the steering wheel. It's a wild scene from the outside perspective, yet from Lila and Chimo's perspective it's no big deal at all, because it is about them, it's their bubble, no one else exists inside of it. But of course it's too good to be true. Reality catches up with them in the end, shattering the bubble, in a shocking and utterly tragic event, which only proves pessimistically that the place in which these characters are from are surely without hope.
The fact that the author of the book is unknown, and that I randomly stumbled upon it in a used book store and that it nowadays seem mostly forgotten, only adds to the enigma that is this book. I'm not even sure that I really read it or if it was just a wild fever dream that I had, but one thing is for certain, and that is that I will not forget it any time soon.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Che la decadenza, la miseria, ciò che è negletto, che annaspa ai margini per sopravvivere abbia un suo proprio fascino - magari malsano - è un assunto condivisibile; che possa affascinare in una maniera così intrisa di tenerezza, di brutale onestà, così "innocente" quasi va a tutto merito dell'autore di questo romanzo.
Quando vivi di nulla, nel nulla, finisci per credere che nulla è ciò che ti meriti, e quand'anche incrociassi sul tuo cammino qualcosa - o qualcuno - di vero, per cui varrebbe la pena continuare a lottare, non te ne accorgi, o finisci per rendertene conto troppo tardi.
Lettura consigliatissima.

[Domenico Francesco · Rating 3 out of 5]

Una mia recensione qui: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KN7Z...

Alla sua uscita nel 1996 questo libro divenne immediatamente un caso editoriale tradotto in tutto il mondo, un'opera apparentemente scritta da un ragazzo nordafricano delle banlieu parigine con aspirazioni letterarie che raccontava con ingenuità e sincerità del suo invaghimento per Lila, giovane e bellissima ragazzina francese. Il polverone mediatico si sollevò sia per le scene erotiche molto spinte, il linguaggio crudo, la rappresentazione delle periferie di Parigi come bombe pronte ad esplodere socialmente da un momento all'altro e un finale tragico, amaro e crudelissimo. Al di là della verità sul suo autore, su cui è più che lecito provare qualche dubbio, c'è un romanzo molto affascinante. delicato e violento, tenero e sconvolgente che non scivola mai nell'osceno o nel pruriginoso fine a sé stesso. Una piccola chicca da riscoprire.

[Library Gabon]

On était tombé dessus à la bibliothèque et on se l'était tous passé dans notre petit groupe de lycéens. J'en ai un souvenir plus que flou. Je me rappelle juste qu'on était tous choqués par le contenu. je ne pense pas que je le relirai pour me rafraichir la mémoire.

[Malola · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was good.
I wanted to give it a 3,5.
Lila, with all her bluffing and (sexual) livelihood/energy, reminded me a little bit of Mina Suvari's character in American Beauty.

[El Viejo Mochales · Rating 5 out of 5]

Muy, muy bueno. Quien realmente lo escribiera debería haber seguido por esa línea. Un gran descubrimiento.

[Ioannidesz Evjeniosz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Το πιο Πρωτότυπο, Εντυπωσιακό και Εκπληκτικό έχω διαβάσει μέχρι σήμερα!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Ellie Bamford · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty disturbing. Interestingly written. Confusing plot and then quite gripping after half way

[Casey lamarche · Rating 4 out of 5]

Might need to re run this one, I loved it. Imagine a French version of lilya forever and Christiane F.

[Lydie Gardan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Je suis allée jusqu'au dernier mot mais ça n'a pas été simple du tout... L'argot de la banlieue parisienne traduit en anglais... c'était vraiment bien loin de l'anglais que j'avais appris à l'école 🤣 Et pourtant... j'ai tenu bon car il y avait tant de candeur, tant de fragilité et tant de souffrance chez ces deux adolescents que j'ai eu envie de les accompagner jusqu'au bout dans leur descente aux enfers même à coups de google traduction. Et puisque l'auteur de ce roman est toujours inconnu, et que de nombreuses suppositions ont été faites, je vais également y ajouter un nom... Nicolas Mathieu. Qu'en pensez-vous ?

[Eurus · Rating 2 out of 5]

sometimes male gaze doesn't stop you from enjoying a book and sometimes the first scene itself is enough to put it back in your bookshelves

[Felix Kreutzer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ein absoluter Geheimtipp. Echt, verspielt, grausam und schön. Immer wieder!

[michele · Rating 4 out of 5]

This proves that I'll read just about any book you throw at me. This is a sad little book about this boy in love with a girl, Lila. She is lovely and care-free, and just out of his league. It sounds pretty mundane, but then it gets out-of-hand. I won't spoil it, but it's not what you think. Disturbing in some parts, let's just say. Not for the faint. The author is anonymous and the book had been translated from French, I think, out of this kid's notebook. It's his/her journal about Lila.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is another in a series of books about people living in horribly destitute, squalorous cicumstances, feeling completely hopeless and devoid of value. In Chimo's world, the only thing that matters at all seems to be sex, something the narrator himself seems to idolize and fear. Of course the book is tragic; the charcters have no chance of happiness or of even coming close to each other, but still the ending is shocking, and overly quick.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quirky and fascinating. I found both main characters quite believable, Lila less so than Chimo. In the end I wanted to know more. This is a very unusual and well-written novel about an culture we know very little about, and it has the feeling of truth to it. This was the second time I read it--first time was a while ago, probably when it first came out. Pity the translator is not given a credit--it's very good.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a real stunner. The author is supposedly a 19 yr old wanting to remain anonymous. I don't buy it. The book is too sharp and clean without the waste or overblown prose that young writers almost always exhibit. But none of this matters. Whether by experienced hand or extremely gifted 19 yr old, this book rocks, period, with a tragic ending that you could only get away with in France. Top top marks.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now I will admit seeing the film first is what lead me to reading this book, the film erosion stays true to a point then goes more Hollywood for an ending. This book is almost like poetry . There is erotic writing but also of youth, lust, fascination and emotion. The book is more heartbreaking a tragedy, but an original love story. That also explains the racial make up and problems of a poor French neighborhood.