A review by somesubtlebutessentialway
Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman

emotional reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

I hesitate to call this exercise in infatuation a romance. Romance seems to sell the wrong idea; that this somehow has a happy ending, or that the characters are on equal footing. But as I continued on I found myself thinking maybe, just maybe, on a good day, this was a romance. After finishing, however, I walk back to my original assessment. Not a romance - though, this is not to the detriment of the book in the slightest. No I do not view this novel as a romance, as many other more critically claimed reviewers seem to have, but I do view it as romantic. There is something so raw in the way that Elio desires Oliver - not just desire, but this need for someone to fix you, someone to make you better, someone to see you, and say "Yes, I feel the same." Above all, Elio wishes for someone to acknowledge him - for someone to be his friend. I think, in a way, Elio's inner monologue and his attraction to Oliver is the truest to teenagehood I could imagine. Thinking about someone so often, so madly, feeling as though if they do not look at you, touch you, feel you, reciprocate - well, you would simply die. His constant looking out for Oliver, never wanting to let him out of his sight, trying and failing to start a game of cat and mouse, shows truly how young and naïve he is. And in their intimacy, when they do come together, there is something so aching in it I could hardly describe. Intimacy that you wish for and yet fear so deeply, this idea that someone might see you - you, the real you - and love you so unapologetically, wish only the best for you and give it to you because, so they say, you deserve it. I felt Elio's overwhelming emotion at every small display Oliver gave - so brought to tears by the trueness, by the tired-boned embrace their love came to be. I think, in part, Call Me By Your Name is more about Elio's relationship with himself than with Oliver. How he sees himself in Oliver, how he wishes to find out more about himself, and so on, is a common theme I believe we don't talk about enough. There is nothing more frustrating about being a teenager than that feeling of not knowing who you are, constantly feeling on the brink of a great discovery, only for the rug to be pulled from under your feet. Elio expresses this constantly, and in such a way that I often smiled - he was being so ridiculous, I thought, but had I not done the exact same? In the end, it is romantic. Their touches, their words, and their days by the pool. The earnest, terrified way in which Elio loves Oliver is horribly human, and horribly young. A book like this isn't necessarily meant, I believe, to make us feel as though we are in love. A book like this, I believe, is meant to remind us that we are on borrowed time, nostalgia isn't always truthful, and if not later, when?
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