Scan barcode
revg's review
5.0
This book is so lush and beautiful. And then they get Armie Hammer to read the audio book so you’ve got him murmuring the most erotic, sensual stuff in your ear. Sometimes his voice drops to a whisper and oh my god.
Fantastic book. Really. I want to read more books by Andre Aciman and I want more things whispered into my ear by Armie Hammer.
Fantastic book. Really. I want to read more books by Andre Aciman and I want more things whispered into my ear by Armie Hammer.
bookappetit's review
4.0
Enjoyed this just as much as I expected to. Also, Armie Hammer reads the audibook. *swoon*
hannacollects's review
they always say you shouldn’t compare a book and its film adaption when reviewing either - but i don’t quite believe in that. i wouldn’t have read this book if i didn’t love the film so much and so i can’t be objective! but i mean, i don’t have to be, so.
i liked this book but i mostly did because of the film. reading this book was interesting because i thought i could imagine how they approached the adaption. i especially enjoyed seeing how thoughts and emotions were described in the book v.s. how they were shown in the film.
as a novel, it wasn’t my favourite. i couldn’t really connect with the main character and some parts were a bit repetitive (like elio’s dreams and all that internal action in general). while i enjoyed the writing style, i didn’t totally love the overly complex language all the time, although it did create an atmosphere. not as much as the film though! the film just made me feel so much while the novel didn’t really evoke lots of emotions.
the end really gave me something to think about, though - and now i’m wondering about that potential movie sequel i read about. no idea whether it’s a good idea but i kind of would like to see where there’d be going with that.
so yeah, didn’t love it, still glad i read it.
i liked this book but i mostly did because of the film. reading this book was interesting because i thought i could imagine how they approached the adaption. i especially enjoyed seeing how thoughts and emotions were described in the book v.s. how they were shown in the film.
as a novel, it wasn’t my favourite. i couldn’t really connect with the main character and some parts were a bit repetitive (like elio’s dreams and all that internal action in general). while i enjoyed the writing style, i didn’t totally love the overly complex language all the time, although it did create an atmosphere. not as much as the film though! the film just made me feel so much while the novel didn’t really evoke lots of emotions.
the end really gave me something to think about, though - and now i’m wondering about that potential movie sequel i read about. no idea whether it’s a good idea but i kind of would like to see where there’d be going with that.
so yeah, didn’t love it, still glad i read it.
thatbookboi's review
5.0
With the addicting writing style that so deeply and almost exclusively represents Elio’s thoughts, the Italian Riviera setting that really warms you to the core, and the most powerful and gut-punching romance I have ever encountered in literature, Andre Aciman created the perfect summer read. It is THE gay novel I have been waiting for. One that holds the intensity of a YA novel but with a prose so beautifully constructed you won’t feel guilty for reading it and portrays all aspects of an all consuming obsession. I simply cannot recommend this book enough.
vidp's review
3.0
I can’t decide if I liked this book more than I expected to or less. I had heard such polarizing reviews.... I think I enjoyed it most at the beginning (the desperate, adversarial, longing stage of the relationship) and the end (the reflective, melancholic moment of looking back on their relationship as frozen in time). But while I get that this was a story about absolute intimacy, some of it was written well enough for it to be beautiful while other moments just felt creepy or gross to witness. I’m trying to be open minded on this point, and like I can understand the eroticism of the peach, but “don’t flush”? really?
I think I also don’t really know enough about Italy or Italian to appreciate all the details of the setting. I’ll certainly remember the experience of reading it, but honestly? in terms of recommending it to others? I would feel pretty lukewarm about it. Also can’t really understand how someone could read this book (which takes place 70% of the time in Elio’s head) and think “wow this should be a movie”. I have yet to see the movie though, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Edit: Looking back on this months later, I'm actually lowering my rating. I simply didn't like it that much.
I think I also don’t really know enough about Italy or Italian to appreciate all the details of the setting. I’ll certainly remember the experience of reading it, but honestly? in terms of recommending it to others? I would feel pretty lukewarm about it. Also can’t really understand how someone could read this book (which takes place 70% of the time in Elio’s head) and think “wow this should be a movie”. I have yet to see the movie though, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Edit: Looking back on this months later, I'm actually lowering my rating. I simply didn't like it that much.
bookswithscrump's review
3.0
For the longest time this was almost a DNF for me, but the last part sucked me in and it got bumped to a 2.5-3. I listened to it on audio, but also read it and found it much better to read than to listen to (not that I mind listening to Armie Hammer, but it just seemed to drag on). The writing is a bit too...navel-gazing for me, I found Elio's character to be your typical self-involved, overthinking teenager and my eyes rolled so very hard at much of this book.
So, why the 3 star rating? Because when the writing was good it was great, and like I said, I couldn't put it down for the last part of it. Also, the descriptions of Italy were amazing, and I can never resist that.
So, why the 3 star rating? Because when the writing was good it was great, and like I said, I couldn't put it down for the last part of it. Also, the descriptions of Italy were amazing, and I can never resist that.
priorfictions's review
5.0
Out of all things I did not expect about this book, it was how deeply - and how hard - I fell in love with it. At the beginning of every chapter, every portion of another day with Oliver and Elio in B., I found myself sinking into the scenery just as they did. I've never been to Italy, and was reading this in winter in New York, but could nearly feel the beating sun on my back, hear the gentle lapping of the waves, and feel the cool, yet just-there flicker of Oliver's eyes on the back of Elio's shoulders (which from our narration, felt at times like my shoulders) from the upper balcony. Elio's narration in the books' last section says that a part of him and Oliver each lives there, as if a ghost, and I know this book will follow me in much the same. Picking it up later, as I doubtlessly will, will carry the ghosts and imaginings of when I first read it, and later first saw it on screen.
(This isn't a review of the movie, but I will say this much: bravo, Mr. Guadagnino. Bravo.)
To say that this book was something of a tough sell for me, at least at first, is very true. Despite what I've said in obvious love and praise, I first had a tough time wrestling with Elio's narrative voice. Part of me loved it, and part of me was in trepidation: very rarely do I read books written in first-person that I enjoy, rarer still do I love them deeply. However, Elio's narrative voice, as it turned out, reminded me much of my own. Often, I feel as though I'm being told a story when a book is narrated in first-person, but here I felt as though I was witnessing it from an internal monologue: the "I" of Elio was not one being spoken to another, but one spoken to himself, and we as readers are guided through this story within his own mind. Sometimes, he speaks nearly to Oliver, and the "I"s dissolve into "you"s, yet I never felt lost: merely that this was another way in which Elio's (and most serial internal monologuers, myself included) mind worked. I was worried, too, about how little seemed to happen in this book. A day might include a swim, a bike ride into B., any combination of little things. Mightn't this become a bore? As it turned out, there was nothing that Aciman's prose couldn't make the slightest bit special, and what Elio acclimated to, I did as well. The presence of Mafalda, the sometimes-cold glances of Oliver, the way Elio's thoughts were often far, far more than ever came out of his mouth. These adjustments made the outstanding events, while not earth-shattering in the way a battle in a fantasy novel might be, in their own way exceptional.
(To some degree, yes, this does include the peach.)
Oliver's turns of moods, and Elio's too. The simple rush after loving someone that led to the unexplained small things: riding on a bicycle afterwards just because "I wanted to see you." The time at Monet's berm, the red swimming trunks, the carefully left-behind shirt and the calling of another by your name, in the most radical act of claiming both them and yourself simultaneously. The knowledge of an impending end, an impending impact: even after your first, deep love is gone, it seems you may still rattle their ghost out of an unsuspected corner, find it crouched in a framed postcard, old shirt, a necklace. These are things, even if we are not familiar with them, that we may find in this book. Even having been in no such deep love, I found myself knowing it, dreading its end like someone stumbling blindly in the dark through a familiar hallway.
A portion that particularly stuck out to me, and was emblematic of the book as a whole, was a portion towards its end: that Elio knew "that our days were numbered, but I didn't dare count them, just as I knew where all this was headed, but didn't care to read the signposts. This was a time when I intentionally failed to drop bread crumbs for my return journey; instead, I ate them" (162).
What a pleasure it was to, as a reader, devour these bread crumbs, and to (even as a person without any sort of great love) devour this love whole - to become so close, through Elio's narration and Aciman's poetic prose, that I felt as though I, too, had felt the sun in Italy with someone I called by my name, and loved in spite of unspooling time.
(This isn't a review of the movie, but I will say this much: bravo, Mr. Guadagnino. Bravo.)
To say that this book was something of a tough sell for me, at least at first, is very true. Despite what I've said in obvious love and praise, I first had a tough time wrestling with Elio's narrative voice. Part of me loved it, and part of me was in trepidation: very rarely do I read books written in first-person that I enjoy, rarer still do I love them deeply. However, Elio's narrative voice, as it turned out, reminded me much of my own. Often, I feel as though I'm being told a story when a book is narrated in first-person, but here I felt as though I was witnessing it from an internal monologue: the "I" of Elio was not one being spoken to another, but one spoken to himself, and we as readers are guided through this story within his own mind. Sometimes, he speaks nearly to Oliver, and the "I"s dissolve into "you"s, yet I never felt lost: merely that this was another way in which Elio's (and most serial internal monologuers, myself included) mind worked. I was worried, too, about how little seemed to happen in this book. A day might include a swim, a bike ride into B., any combination of little things. Mightn't this become a bore? As it turned out, there was nothing that Aciman's prose couldn't make the slightest bit special, and what Elio acclimated to, I did as well. The presence of Mafalda, the sometimes-cold glances of Oliver, the way Elio's thoughts were often far, far more than ever came out of his mouth. These adjustments made the outstanding events, while not earth-shattering in the way a battle in a fantasy novel might be, in their own way exceptional.
(To some degree, yes, this does include the peach.)
Oliver's turns of moods, and Elio's too. The simple rush after loving someone that led to the unexplained small things: riding on a bicycle afterwards just because "I wanted to see you." The time at Monet's berm, the red swimming trunks, the carefully left-behind shirt and the calling of another by your name, in the most radical act of claiming both them and yourself simultaneously. The knowledge of an impending end, an impending impact: even after your first, deep love is gone, it seems you may still rattle their ghost out of an unsuspected corner, find it crouched in a framed postcard, old shirt, a necklace. These are things, even if we are not familiar with them, that we may find in this book. Even having been in no such deep love, I found myself knowing it, dreading its end like someone stumbling blindly in the dark through a familiar hallway.
A portion that particularly stuck out to me, and was emblematic of the book as a whole, was a portion towards its end: that Elio knew "that our days were numbered, but I didn't dare count them, just as I knew where all this was headed, but didn't care to read the signposts. This was a time when I intentionally failed to drop bread crumbs for my return journey; instead, I ate them" (162).
What a pleasure it was to, as a reader, devour these bread crumbs, and to (even as a person without any sort of great love) devour this love whole - to become so close, through Elio's narration and Aciman's poetic prose, that I felt as though I, too, had felt the sun in Italy with someone I called by my name, and loved in spite of unspooling time.