Elio, a seventeen year old boy, lives with his parents, a scholar and his wife, on the Italian Riviera. During the summer they host an academic, and this year the visitor is Oliver, an American editing a scholarly manuscript in order to ready it for publishing. During the six weeks that Oliver stays there, he charms everyone, confuses and pains Elio, and eventually begins a relationship with him.
The book is narrated by Elio - or rather, the book is a record of Elio's continual inner monologue. He is obsessed with Oliver. Within the first week he is mentally begging Oliver to touch him. And the reader has no idea what Oliver thinks of all this, because Elio is so wrapped up in himself and questions and rethinks Oliver's actions so constantly that there really is no way to tell what their interactions are really like. For a book that is supposed to be about an intimate, passionate romance, it's a little frustrating that the reader can't even tell what's actually going on.
And let me stress that Call Me by Your Name is about a boy's sexual awakening (which I don't understand because he sleeps with girls and clearly has had feelings for boys as well - he seems well aware of what he wants) and a romance so deep and powerful that Elio and Oliver still have feelings for each other twenty years later.
Which brings me to my main problem with this book: Elio and Oliver barely know each other before they confess their undying love to each other. Which is something I hate in romance novels. They chitchat for four weeks, go through strange acts of ignoring each other (although, because Elio is so trapped inside his mind, I have no idea what Oliver was doing during these periods. Was he aware of Elio's strange behavior? Did he reciprocate? Having an unreliable narrator is not a good way of convincing the reader that this is an epic romance), then suddenly have a weird moment of confession and get straight to molesting fruit and sneaking into each other's bedrooms.
This relationship progressed very, very fast but had no depth, no real intimacy. Yes, they got physically intimate, but they were never friends, either before or after they slept together. Did Elio talk to Oliver about his life in the States? No. Did he know anything about Oliver besides his obvious knowledge of scholarly texts? No. Did they even discuss favorite animals? Favorite colors? Favorite foods? No.
They could talk about anything as long as it was philosophical or physical, but they couldn't even laugh together. So no, Aciman, you have not convinced me that this is the most intimate relationship Elio or Oliver will ever have. This is not the happiest they will ever be. This is the story of a teenage boy lusting after a summer visitor.
I've complained about the content (or lack of content) but I can't write a review without talking about the writing. I didn't like it. Self-indulgent to the max, the book could have been a hundred pages shorter. And the language - vague to be vague, vulgar to be vulgar. The writing is supposed to sound scholarly and edgy, and it means nothing. Which violates a basic code of writing: If you're going to write, say something.
Other reviews you might enjoy:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/books/review/DErasmo.t.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/21/AR2007032102069.html
https://literaryfictions.com/2017/03/06/call-me-by-your-name-a-capsule-book-review/
Next week I will be reading The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, her first and most well-known novel. It is a retelling of the story of Achilles and Patroclus, who bond as they go to war with Sparta.
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