Name: Elias Bouschor's review of Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman
Item: Call Me by Your Name
Rating: 4
Author: Elias Bouschor

André Aciman

Call Me by Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents' cliff-side mansion on the Italian Riviera. Unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, at first each feigns indifference. But during the restless summer weeks that follow, unrelenting buried currents of obsession and fear, fascination and desire, intensify their passion as they test the charged ground between them. What grows from the depths of their spirits is a romance of scarcely six weeks' duration and an experience that marks them for a lifetime. For what the two discover on the Riviera and during a sultry evening in Rome is the one thing both already fear they may never truly find again: total intimacy. The psychological maneuvers that accompany attraction have seldom been more shrewdly captured than in André Aciman's frank, unsentimental, heartrending elegy to human passion. Call Me by Your Name is clear-eyed, bare-knuckled, and ultimately unforgettable.

A Novel

Call Me by Your Name

The film tie-in edition to the already highly acclaimed Luca Guadagnino-directed film of one of the great love stories of our time.

Call Me by Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents' cliff-side mansion on the Italian Riviera. Unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, at first each feigns indifference. But during the restless summer weeks that follow, unrelenting buried currents of obsession and fear, fascination and desire, intensify their passion as they test the charged ground between them. What grows from the depths of their spirits is a romance of scarcely six weeks' duration and an experience that marks them for a lifetime. For what the two discover on the Riviera and during a sultry evening in Rome is the one thing both already fear they may never truly find again: total intimacy.

Angelica Garcia

The light of my eyes, I said, light of my eyes, light of the world, that’s what you are, light of my life

Elias Bouschor

“But to feel nothing, so as to not feel anything… what a waste.”

𓇢𓆸 jerica

Yours, like Later!, had an off-the-cuff, unceremonious, here, catch quality that reminded me how twisted and secretive my desires were compared to the expansive spontaneity of everything about him.

... pick those fruits that were almost blushing with shame, she said... Is this one blushing with shame? No, she would say, this one is too young still, youth has no shame, shame comes with age.

I had never heard someone his age say, I know myself. It intimidated me.

Oliver timido? That was new. Could all of his gruff Americanisms be nothing more than an exaggerated way of covering up the simple fact that he didn't know—or feared he didn't know—how to take his leave gracefully?

I was Glaucus and he was Diomedes. In the name of some obscure cult among men, I was giving him my golden armor for his bronze. Fair exchange. Neither haggle, just as neither spoke of thrift or extravagance.

Let summer never end, let him never go away, let the music on perpetual replay play forever, I'm asking for very little, and I swear I'll ask for nothing more.

... "Must we?" This was the closest I would ever come to saying, Stay. Just stay with me.

The summer I'd hear a bird sing, smell a plant, or feel the mist rise from under my feet on warm sunny days and, because my senses were always on alert, would automatically find them rushing to him.

P.S. We are not written for one instrument alone; I am not, neither are you.

I liked it when our feet were aligned, left with left, and struck the ground at at the same time, leaving footprints on the shore that I wished to return to and, in secret, place my foot where his had left its mark. 

I was going for the devious smile that would suddenly light up his face each time he'd read my mind, when all I wanted was skin, just skin.

I shut my eyes, say the word, and I'm back in Italy, so many years ago, walking down the tree-lined driveway, watching him step out of the cab, billowy blue shirt, wide-open collar, sunglasses, straw hat, skin everywhere. 

Sadie Hoffman

And the digging could go on and on. Like the subconscious, like love, like memory, like time itself, like every single one of us, the church is built on the ruins of subsequent restorations, there is no rock bottom, there is no first anything, no last anything, just layers and secret passageways and interlocking chambers.

If there is any truth in the world, it lies when I’m with you

The sultry, sensual novel of obsession and desire that inspired the Oscar-winning film.

Iris van der zanden

But to feel nothing so as to not feel anything-what a waste!

Holly

...youth has no shame, shame comes with age.

...smells and sounds I'd grown up with and known every year of my life until then but that had suddenly turned on me and acquired an inflection forever colored by the events of that summer.

Tabea

Perhaps we were friends first and lovers second. But then perhaps this is what lovers are.

macie livesay

“We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything - what a waste!“

Victoria

“God, the way they envied us from across the dinner table that first night in Rome,” he said. “Staring at us, the young, the old, men, women—every single one of them at that dinner table—gaping at us, because we were so happy.

“And on that evening when we grow older still we’ll speak about these two young men as though they were two strangers we met on the train and whom we admire and want to help along. And we’ll want to call it envy, because to call it regret would break our hearts.”

“Perhaps I am not yet ready to speak of them as strangers,” I said.

“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think either of us ever will be.”

I stopped for a second. If you remember everything, I wanted to say, and if you are really like me, then before you leave tomorrow, or when you’re just ready to shut the door of the taxi and have already said goodbye to everyone else and there’s not a thing left to say in this life, then, just this once, turn to me, even in jest, or as an afterthought, which would have meant everything to me when we were together, and, as you did back then, look me in the face, hold my gaze, and call me by your name.

Hogne 

The film tie-in edition to the already highly acclaimed Luca Guadagnino-directed film of one of the great love stories of our time.

Definitely meanders a bit but has some beautiful prose. Incredibly romantic and made me cry. Freaky as all hell but it adds to it

a re-read of one of my favorite books. more beautiful and masterful than I remembered. this story will always have a place in my heart. 🌊☀️

Cate

marie:)

The ending saved this, many parts of the book seemed to drawl on for longer than necessary, but that's art I guess!

karla nicole

It was umnessary disgusting sometimes but except from that Its a masterpiece and really poetical

Gwenifer

Carmen Malca

The end saved this from getting an even lower rating. The atmosphere was great but I didn’t care for any of the characters besides the father. 

Patrick Book

3.5, maybe. The last third has a lot of heavy lifting to do to make up for the ceaseless ruminating of the first third, but the more I think about that last stretch the more impactful it seems.

Now a Major Motion Picture from Director Luca Guadagnino, Starring Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet, and Written by Three-Time OscarTM Nominee James Ivory The Basis of the Oscar-Winning Best Adapted Screenplay A New York Times Bestseller A USA Today Bestseller A Los Angeles Times Bestseller A Vulture Book Club Pick An Instant Classic and One of the Great Love Stories of Our Time Andre Aciman's Call Me by Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents’ cliffside mansion on the Italian Riviera. Each is unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, when, during the restless summer weeks, unrelenting currents of obsession, fascination, and desire intensify their passion and test the charged ground between them. Recklessly, the two verge toward the one thing both fear they may never truly find again: total intimacy. It is an instant classic and one of the great love stories of our time. Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Ficition A New York Times Notable Book of the Year • A Publishers Weekly and The Washington Post Best Book of the Year • A New York Magazine "Future Canon" Selection • A Chicago Tribune and Seattle Times (Michael Upchurch's) Favorite Favorite Book of the Year

Gelaine Trinidad

Warning: this book review is extremely biased and borderline fangirl-esque. I love this book, and I love André Aciman's writing. This book has everything I love when reading for the sake of escapism. This is a bittersweet coming of age book about desire, longing, first love, and first heartache. This is also a book that naturally shows the fluidity of gender through Elio's thoughts and actions. It is the perfect book to read as summer is coming to a close; reading this made me dream of peaceful and slow Mediterranean summers.

Again, there is so much tension, longing, and desire in the first part as I immersed myself in Elio's stream of consciousness. I loved all the symbolisms like Oliver's swim shorts and Oliver picking ripe apricots. Aciman has a way with words and plays with the origin of the word "apricot" in a sensual way. Also, one cannot forget another fruit metaphor—the peach scene in both the movie and the book. After reading this, I felt compelled to watch the film version again and look for subtle connections to the book (e.g. the statue they found in the sea in the movie represents a specific part of the book in which Elio feared that Oliver drowned and his lifeless and eyeless body—like the statue— will show up on the shores).

It's hard to put this book down. There was so much push and pull between Elio and Oliver: their indirect forms of communication and hidden truths they insert in their coded conversations in hopes that it'll be understood by the other. There was also a lot to unpack from Elio's fantasies and imaginations. Elio experiences such contrasting emotions in part two such as desire and shame. It is an honest portrayal of someone experiencing love and passion for the first time.

Aciman also loves writing about time and the concept of parallel lives. Elio and Oliver are living in borrowed time. In part three, this theme is explored even further through something called The San Clemente Syndrome: "like the subconscious, like love, like memory, like time itself, like every single one of us, the church is built on the ruins of subsequent restorations, there is no rock bottom, there is no first anything, no last anything, just layers and secret passageways and interlocking chambers, like the Christian Catacombs, and right along these, even a Jewish Catacomb.” I am left even more heartbroken by this next quote: “...how we move through time, how time moves through us, how we change and keep changing and come back to the same. He came. He left. Nothing else has changed. I had not changed. The world hasn’t changed. Yet nothing would be the same. All that remains is dreammaking and strange remembrance.” It makes you wonder, what could have been? Aciman writes with sincere infatuation with nostalgia and moments that may never happen again.

The night spent in Rome with older literature lovers is a very meaningful time for Elio not just because Oliver is there with him but because Elio finds a community he wants to belong to and felt an instant connection with. This is unlike his friends back in B. It’s a good reminder for Elio as he’s growing up—there’s more to life outside his bubble. Although part three had some questionable parts (e.g. the poet's story with a transgender hotel clerk in Bangkok), the night in Rome was for the most part very romantic and intimate.

Elio's father's speech in both the book and the movie is so meaningful; Aciman brings it home with the familiar themes of time, love, and parallel lives in part four. “Time makes us sentimental. Perhaps, in the end, it is because of time that we suffer."

*plays Sufjan Stevens in the background*

I highly recommend this book and the audiobook narrated by Armie Hammer.

The sudden and powerful attraction between a teenage boy and a summer guest at his parents' house on the Italian Riviera has a profund and lasting influence that will mark them both for a lifetime, in a novel of obsession, passion, fear, and desire. By the author of False Papers.

Megan Parrott

One of those books that I wish I could experience for the first time again. It’s intoxicating in the way many coming-of-age love stories can be, but it never felt corny or trite. I loved being inside Elio’s head — especially when his mind would wandered from thought to thought, as he tried to take in everything he felt. For me, this book speaks to how fluid love is, if we allow ourselves to surrender to it.

Update: The audiobook as read by Armie Hammer is my favorite iteration of this story (though I also loved the movie and of course the written work).

Ryan Mateyk

idk what to say but it's SO GOOD everything about cmbyn just so perfect 

gita

The sudden and powerful attraction between a teenage boy and a summer guest at his parents' house on the Italian Riviera has a profund and lasting influence that will mark them both for a lifetime, in a novel of obsession, passion, fear, and desire. By the author of False Papers. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

armoni mayes

After reading this book, i will refer to my life as “before” or “after” reading call me by your name because i am simply destroyed

Anjorin Molayo 

“Perhaps the physical and the metaphorical meanings are clumsy ways of understanding what happens when two beings need, not just to be close together, but to become so totally ductile that each becomes the other. To be who I am because of you. To be who he was because of me.”

I’m still in awe of how beautiful Aciman’s writing style is. this entire story depicted the desperation and the chaos sexual desires can bring. it’s sweet at times and terrifying at times. it's truthful in a raw way. 

“We had found the stars, you and I.”

Although i won’t deny the fact that entering Elio’s head left me disturbed. I still can’t fathom how dirty his mind could go.

And i can’t move past the fact that Oliver was grooming Elio. Yes, Oliver tried to stop the attraction towards each other, but it still felt like what he was doing wasn’t enough.

The final part of this book is just...It broke me to the core😔. 

4.25 ⭐️

Rodrigo Figueiredo Severino

** spoiler alert **
           I have a lot of thoughts about this.

The book is beautifully written. The way the author manages to walk the line between erotic and poetic is stellar and the way he brings Elio’s speech to life is fantastic, giving us a true insight to what his feelings really are.

Now the thing is you’ll have to come into this book with a seriously open mind cuz I was absolutely not expecting the age gap to be this weird, Elio to be this obsessed as a 17 year old with a 24 year old man (that indulges in such behavior), I was not expecting him to wish Oliver was paralyzed just so he could keep him in Italy, for example, and I also wasn’t expecting Oliver to place his hand on Elios stomach while he takes a dump in Rome so he can “feel what he feels”, between other weird parts of this book.

What redeems this book for me, despite the obsessive and unhealthy nature of their relationship for most of it, are two things: the last 40 pages when Oliver leaves and Elio grows up tie the book all together and show that there was real love from both parts instead of just obsession from a 17 year old teen discovering himself, and the last about 20 pages specially are really touching. And second, it’s just relatability. Of course this is taken to an huge extreme, but as someone who has been on a similar situation to what the book depicts (without the weird age gap), a lot of this book felt like direct stabs to my little heart. So the beautiful poetic writing style, the ending that almost makes the rest of the book less weird by acknowledging their growth and how their relationship was real, just mildly inappropriate and too intense for its own good, and the fact I can in hindsight get the messages and relate to the situation in the book leads to my 4 star rating.

muskaan bal

the writing was brilliant but the plot was so mid and boring. this became INSUFFERABLE 😭 and it was anticlimactic. i actually liked the ending and it was the best part.

china alford

𓆨

this made me experience feelings i've never had

Julie Rubens

I honestly just didn’t like this book very much. I thought it was really weird at times and I just wasn’t very invested in either the plot or the characters. 
It definitely wasn’t a bad book, I just didn’t enjoy reading it a lot.

Ryan 

4.5 stars

there were a few small plot holes that comes into mind. but the sensual tone, the flow, the writing, PART 4 (!!), it struck a chord that became endearing and perpetual

Julia Lundberg 

** spoiler alert **
           beautiful ending of an irritating, confusing and pretentious book. 

"I stopped for a second. If you remember everything, I wanted to say, and if you are really like me, then before you leave tomorrow, or when you're just ready to shut the door of the taxi and have already said goodbye to everyone else and there's not a thing left to say in this life, then, just this once, turn to me, even in jest, or as an afterthought, which would have meant everything to me when we were together, and, as you did back then, look me in the face, hold my gaze, and call me by your name." 

an extraordinary way of ending a book, a shame that the rest of the book was awful. 

we can begin talking about that a twenty-four-year old man iniciated a relationship with 
 seventeen-year old boy. you can blame it on the location or the era, i don't care, it's still extremely wierd and off-putting. 

i couldn't relate to the carachters at all. it was annoyingly obvious that it was a sixty-year-old dude that tried to portrait a seventeen-year-old perspective. who reads dante and plays mozart when they are 17? 

if you aren't knowledgable in greek history, this whole book will be a confusing mess for you because i lost interest every time i read a greek name which was like every second page.

i didn't feel like it was a passionate love, it was a obsessive, wierd and intrusive love. 

i think that oliver is cruel, selfish, immature and that he is playing with elios emotions. 

i didn't understand either of elio or oliver. the least elio. he was constantly aware of every step oliver did, and he was jealous and petty. he was constantly asuming thinks about oliver that wasn't true and he was incredibly hypocritical. 

i would also like to mention a very disturbing part of the book where he mentions rape in a very wierd context: 

"the bruised and damaged peach, like a rape victim (HEELLLLLLO?????), lay on its side on my desk shamed, loyal, aching, and confused, struggling no to spill what i'd left inside." 

when we are already mentioning the peach, what is up with that??????????? and the constant mentioning of sex all the time. 

and the fact that a straight man is writing a book of a gay relationship doesn't sit well with me.

azliana aziz

what a journey it is. i am still reeling from the powerful last chapter and the conversation between Elio and his father. 
i am a sobbing mess by the end and i think this is probably the only book that i literally clutched my own hand and heart while reading. 
deeply in love with Aciman's beautiful prose that i keep re reading and making notes of and will keep on going back to remember them probably years later or perhaps tonight, before i go to sleep. 
reading this was all consuming and crushing at the same time but also so beguiling that you can't help to continue although you know when you reach the finishing line that your heart will break to tiny little pieces and i did.

+ re the film adaptation that will be coming our way soon! YEAY!! i know that Timothee Chalamet will do Elio justice and yes my heart will break again and again.

Hogne &
Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman

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Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman