Sometimes the best thing about the summer is that we can forget it. Unfortunately, that is not the case for everyone; summers can either be the most insignificant filler months of the year or the months that completely change the trajectory of your life.
In the book by Andre Aciman, Call Me By Your Name, it is clear that Elio’s summer turned from bleak and uneventful to a redefining moment in his life, determining things like his self-discovery and even sexual orientation.
Somewhere in Northern Italy in 1983, a relationship blossoms between seventeen-year-old Elio and Oliver, his father’s research assistant, who is visiting for the summer. They bond over their emerging curiosities regarding their sexual orientations, Jewish heritage, and passion for all things ancient history.
With reviews from New York Times magazine calling it “an exceptionally beautiful book that cannot quite bring itself to draw the inevitable conclusion about axis shifting passion that men and women of the world might like to think they will always reach,” GoodReads referring to is as “a beautifully written story of passion, obsession, and possibly love,” and the Word Press stating that “Overall, the writing is elegant,” tt is clear that Call Me By Your Name is a masterpiece that tattoos itself into your soul forever.
Once you have read it, it is difficult to remember your life before reading the iconic Mr. Pearlman’s monologue: “We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster, that we go bankrupt by 30 and have less to offer” (CMBYN, Aciman). Before reading the way Aciman wrote about European summer nights, and the extreme feelings exchanged between practically every character.
The story reads like a slow-paced, slow-burning romance, but not in a way that bores the reader and makes them skip parts and skim sections of the book so that they can get to the “good” stuff, but rather, in a way that the reader empathizes with and almost directly feels Elio’s growing romantic desires with Oliver. All the emotions are so personally delivered that it feels as though you were the main character experiencing the thrill and the rush parallel to Elio.
A fact that most people do not realize, but is actually very crucial to understanding why this summer love feels so intense, is that the story is told using the literary device of an unreliable narrator. The reader’s entire perspective on every little interaction and detail is seen through the eyes of Elio, an impressionable and sensitive 17-year-old boy.
At first, he sees Oliver as this nonchalant, cool, movie-star-like person, and it irritates him: “Don’t you think he’s impolite when he says ‘Later’? Arrogant. Just Watch” (CMBYN, Aciman). For a good portion of the book, Elio’s confused by Oliver’s laid-back nature and is under the impression that he is not liked by him, which slows down their discovery of their shared love for each other.
Had the book perhaps been written from Oliver’s perspective instead, it could have been read in a completely different manner. We would have been able to understand and figure out how Oliver really felt, instead of harping on it and trying to understand and decode the maze that is his heart and mind, just like Elio was trying to do.
In addition to the intentional pacing of the book and the point of view that it is narrated in, another important factor to consider is the genre and how it is not just a romance novel; it is also a coming-of-age story. Elio’s character development is not like that of typical coming-of-age books. By the end, he did not reinvent himself; he did not learn what path he was meant to take or who he was supposed to be. All these things happen right in the middle of the book, rather than at the end.
The standard plot line books follow are introductions, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. The entire book could be considered a “rising action.” We can feel love developing, but we are not sure if it is real, or reciprocated, or even genuine, or just lust. The entire story is all anticipation of the “climax”, which is when Elio and Oliver finally come together and share all the love that they have saved and built up for each other all summer. But after this happens, there is no resolution. Instead, a new problem is created for Elio.
He has to deal with navigating this new part of his identity, and that could not have been an easy task, considering the year is 1983 in Italy. He also has to cope with the fact that the summer has come to an end, the hot weather is gone, and so is Oliver and their exciting love. It is the biggest edge of the century.
The reader is left feeling unsatisfied and as though the story is unfinished. It feels unfair. But this fact just reflects back on how significant it is that this story is told through the eyes of Elio. The story feels unfinished because he feels as though their story is unfinished.
We, as the readers, feel confused and angry with Oliver’s choice of leaving and marrying a woman, because Elio feels the same way.
Aciman beautifully intertwined how the storyline flowed and synced it up perfectly with Elio’s intense emotions.
Another thing to appreciate is how raw and unapologetically Aciman writes these characters. They are all people with redeeming qualities, sure, but they are well-rounded individuals who are full of flaws that show their humanity.
One specific famous scene would be the peach scene. Reading that with no warning of what was to come next was a very interesting experience, and it is so easy to get grossed out by it or brush it off as just another kinky fan service scene. But the more thought it is given, the easier it becomes to realize how special, raw, and even kind that moment was.
It was Oliver’s way of communicating to Elio that their love for each other acts almost as an instrumental project that binds them together as one singular being. It is as if someone asked the question, “If I’m in my body, and you’re in yours, how can we ever truly be together?” and you answered by eating a peach they personally fertilized just for you.
This is also why the title of the book itself is so interesting. “Call Me By Your Name” through a more nuanced translation just means “You are a part of me, and I’m a part of you. We complete each other, so call me by your name, and I’ll call you by mine.”
While there are a plethora of amazing things to say about this book, it would be ignorant to shy away from the controversial topics that surround it, such as Oliver and Elio’s age gap. Elio is 17, and Oliver is 24, a fact which turns most people away from discovering this story for very fair reasons.
The main conflict that makes this love feel so out of reach and unattainable is the fact that these are two men in the 80’s, but it would be wrong to say that the age gap does not also play a role in the way things turned out to be. Elio is a naive young boy who does not have much life experience, and he sees Oliver as such a cool older person with much knowledge and who is so much wiser than him. This creates an unintentional power imbalance between the two in Elio’s mind. He is scared to take leaps of faith in their relationship, try new things out, be bold, and fear disappointing or upsetting Oliver.
But even when they do try “new things,” Elio is very careful with what he does or how he acts with Oliver, reassuring him that their relationship is strictly secret and that he will not slip up; “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna tell anyone or anything”(CMBYN, Aciman).
The age detail in the story would be something easy to appreciate if we just looked at it in this specific project, but it seems to be a reoccurring theme throughout all the works of Andre Aciman which leads me personally to wonder if this was really an intentional addition to the storyline to add on to the passion, or if it is just his personal fantasy he cannot help but incorporate into everything he writes.
Whether or not he is a madman or a literary genius, we will never know, but one thing is for certain: Call Me By Your Name is a masterpiece. Filled with undeniable amounts of want, desire, and yearning, it is a book that, once you are done reading, will make you think about your past relationships and why they did not work out. Did you want them as badly as Elio wanted Oliver?
This is a love letter to Andre Aciman’s craft and his ability to invoke such immense emotions in us and to communicate how raw it is to be human and vulnerable with another person, what it is like to share the hidden pieces of yourself with someone else, really just what love looks like behind the scenes; it is not always glitz and glamor, not always able to be put into a neat little box, and how it is not always as fulfilling as we wish it would be.
