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A review by priorfictions
Call Me By Your Name - Screenplay by André Aciman, James Ivory
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.