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A review by 1quillb
Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman
slow-paced
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
0.25
Don’t read this book. Please don’t. It’s sick and twisted and honestly pretty homophobic. It never should have been made into a movie, or been made popular. It’s a miracle I finished it.
Firstly, I would like to leave some... interesting quotes from this book that might be enough to explain my rating:
“part of me didn’t mind his dying, that there was even something almost exciting in the thought of his bloated, eyeless body finally showing up on our shores.”
(No Oliver doesn’t die) Huh? What? This is insanely creepy.
“I wanted him gone from our home so as to be done with him. I wanted him dead too, so that if I couldn’t stop thinking about him and worrying about when would be the next time I’d see him, at least his death would put an end to it.”
I’m sorry?? You what?? You want to kill him??
“If I didn’t kill him, then I’d cripple him for life, so that he’d be with us in a wheelchair and never go back to the States. If he were in a wheelchair, I would always know where he was, and he’d be easy to find. I would feel superior to him and become his master, now that he was crippled.”
The quote above is really just WTF. It’s completely ableist and just plain wrong - NOBODY should ever think that way about disabled people, it’s so disrespectful and unacceptable. It shouldn’t be something the main character thinks, and it altogether shouldn’t be a line in a book.
“It made me hard, even though I didn’t know if what aroused me was her naked body lying in the sun, his next to hers, or both of theirs together.”
I- I don’t even know what would posses someone to write this. There’s something seriously wrong with this main character if he gets aroused by watching his crush and a girl lying naked on a boat.
“On impulse, I removed my bathing suit and began to put his on. I knew what I wanted, and I wanted it with the kind of intoxicated rapture that makes people take risks they would never take even with plenty of alcohol in their system. I wanted to come in his suit, and leave the evidence for him to find there.”
THIS MAN WENT INTO OLIVERS ROOM WITHOUT PERMISSION, TOOK HIS BATHING SUIT, SMELLED IT, AND PUT IT ON. HE THEN JERKED OFF IN THE BATHING SUIT ON OLIVERS PILLOW. ELIO NO THIS SHOULD NOT BE A THING
“No, I didn’t hate it at all. But what I felt was worse than hate. I didn’t want to remember, didn’t want to think about it. Just put it away. It had never happened.”
“I knew exactly what he wanted to talk about. He wanted to go over the moment when I’d almost asked him to stop.”
“I wished we hadn’t slept together.”
Elio just never seems to enjoy being with Oliver? Like, he does, but he also doesn’t. The author is unclear. But it makes it seem like it was almost a non-consensual thing between them. Which I guess it WAS consensual at the time but still, Elio hated being with Oliver and yet continued to be with him. It’s not a good lesson to put in a book.
““Don’t flush,” I’d said, “I want to look.” What I saw brought out strains of compassion, for him, for his body, for his life, which suddenly seemed so frail and vulnerable. “Our bodies won’t have secrets now,” I said as I took my turn and sat down.”
THIS IS NOT OKAY. THIS IS SO CREEPY. NONONO THIS IS NOT AN OKAY THING. WHY WAS THIS WRITTEN. WHY WAS THIS SOMETHING THE EDITOR LET HAPPEN.
“She was more than twice my age but I could have made love to her this minute”
This sounds very much like disguised biphobia from the author - it makes it seem like bisexuals will sleep with anyone and everyone just because they’re attracted to both genders. There are other quotes similar to this as well but they don’t make as much sense out-of-context. This quote is also awful because um... he’s 17?? and twice his age would be 34??! That really isn’t okay. At all.
“We’d all heard about his women when he was young, but I’d never even had an inkling of anything else. Was my father someone else? And if he was someone else, who was I?”
This quote is talking about Elio thinking maybe his dad is also bisexual, because of a talk they had. First off, the “talk” they had was awful and homophobic, and if the author was trying to make it heartfelt and accepting, he failed greatly. Secondly, this quote makes it seem like you become a different person once you come out - which you DON’T - and that’s a really bad lesson to teach.
Other things:
The writing style. It’s just NOT attractive at all, it’s so completely confusing and makes no sense. There are page-long paragraphs where dialogue it clumped together, so you really have no idea who’s saying what. And there are SO. MANY. METAPHORS. No 17-year-old thinks like that! I’d say about 70% of this book is just metaphor after metaphor after metaphor - there’s hardly any true dialogue or scenes, just explanations about what’s going on inside Elio’s head (and Elio’s head is extremely boring, sadistical, and just really creepy).
It’s SO BORING. Other than the stupid nonsense metaphors, literally nothing happens. Well, things happen, but they aren’t really things. This book lacks description - of characters, actions and places - and so even when there’s dialogue or they go somewhere and do something, I found myself skipping over large chunks of it (again, because of the insane amount of metaphors).
Elio is 17, and Oliver is 24. The 7-year age gap wouldn’t be a big deal if they were both older, but in the USA - at least - it’s an illegal relationship. It just adds to the creepiness and authoritative nature of this whole story and the author definitely should have thought about that beforehand.
The fact that they call each other by their own names - yeah, that’s the name of the book, but wHy?! It just seems really self-fulfilling and narcissistic, and the author honestly never really explains WHY it’s a thing. It makes absolutely no sense.
The peach scene. The freaking peach scene. Everything - EVERYTHING - is wrong with it. That never should have been written. I hope it’s not in the movie. I think it’s in the movie. Why is there a movie of this book?!?
A big problem I have with this is that while Elio is bisexual the author of the book is straight and obviously doesn’t view bisexuality in the best light. Elio is intimate with both a woman - Marzia - and Oliver at the same time, and doesn’t see a problem with it. At all. He even says, multiple times, he doesn’t feel a need to mention it to either of them. Even though it means he’s cheating on them both. Throughout the book he also talks about wanting to be with other women/men for no reason other than that they’re there. So to me, that’s the authors way of saying “just because the main character is bisexual doesn’t mean he actually cares about who he’s with or their emotions - as long as he’s with both genders to make him bisexual.” It’s really offensive.
Elio and Oliver don’t really have a romance or relationship - they have copious amounts of lust and confusion. If I had read this when I was younger, I would have been really confused about what love was actually meant to be. Because this is not love; there is no love or romance in this book. It’s just really boring and sadistic.
Overall: No. This is not a good book. This reads like a really bad, really long fan fiction where nothing actually happens, the author just wanted to write a book. It ends with Oliver married to someone and Elio basically alone and grumpy, and so the whole thing was pretty pointless. I think the author was trying to make the reader feel emotions, but I felt absolutely nothing the whole time (aside from boredom, that is). So I guess if you want to be bored and slightly horrified, read this book, but otherwise keep far, far away from it.
Firstly, I would like to leave some... interesting quotes from this book that might be enough to explain my rating:
“part of me didn’t mind his dying, that there was even something almost exciting in the thought of his bloated, eyeless body finally showing up on our shores.”
(No Oliver doesn’t die) Huh? What? This is insanely creepy.
“I wanted him gone from our home so as to be done with him. I wanted him dead too, so that if I couldn’t stop thinking about him and worrying about when would be the next time I’d see him, at least his death would put an end to it.”
I’m sorry?? You what?? You want to kill him??
“If I didn’t kill him, then I’d cripple him for life, so that he’d be with us in a wheelchair and never go back to the States. If he were in a wheelchair, I would always know where he was, and he’d be easy to find. I would feel superior to him and become his master, now that he was crippled.”
The quote above is really just WTF. It’s completely ableist and just plain wrong - NOBODY should ever think that way about disabled people, it’s so disrespectful and unacceptable. It shouldn’t be something the main character thinks, and it altogether shouldn’t be a line in a book.
“It made me hard, even though I didn’t know if what aroused me was her naked body lying in the sun, his next to hers, or both of theirs together.”
I- I don’t even know what would posses someone to write this. There’s something seriously wrong with this main character if he gets aroused by watching his crush and a girl lying naked on a boat.
“On impulse, I removed my bathing suit and began to put his on. I knew what I wanted, and I wanted it with the kind of intoxicated rapture that makes people take risks they would never take even with plenty of alcohol in their system. I wanted to come in his suit, and leave the evidence for him to find there.”
THIS MAN WENT INTO OLIVERS ROOM WITHOUT PERMISSION, TOOK HIS BATHING SUIT, SMELLED IT, AND PUT IT ON. HE THEN JERKED OFF IN THE BATHING SUIT ON OLIVERS PILLOW. ELIO NO THIS SHOULD NOT BE A THING
“No, I didn’t hate it at all. But what I felt was worse than hate. I didn’t want to remember, didn’t want to think about it. Just put it away. It had never happened.”
“I knew exactly what he wanted to talk about. He wanted to go over the moment when I’d almost asked him to stop.”
“I wished we hadn’t slept together.”
Elio just never seems to enjoy being with Oliver? Like, he does, but he also doesn’t. The author is unclear. But it makes it seem like it was almost a non-consensual thing between them. Which I guess it WAS consensual at the time but still, Elio hated being with Oliver and yet continued to be with him. It’s not a good lesson to put in a book.
““Don’t flush,” I’d said, “I want to look.” What I saw brought out strains of compassion, for him, for his body, for his life, which suddenly seemed so frail and vulnerable. “Our bodies won’t have secrets now,” I said as I took my turn and sat down.”
THIS IS NOT OKAY. THIS IS SO CREEPY. NONONO THIS IS NOT AN OKAY THING. WHY WAS THIS WRITTEN. WHY WAS THIS SOMETHING THE EDITOR LET HAPPEN.
“She was more than twice my age but I could have made love to her this minute”
This sounds very much like disguised biphobia from the author - it makes it seem like bisexuals will sleep with anyone and everyone just because they’re attracted to both genders. There are other quotes similar to this as well but they don’t make as much sense out-of-context. This quote is also awful because um... he’s 17?? and twice his age would be 34??! That really isn’t okay. At all.
“We’d all heard about his women when he was young, but I’d never even had an inkling of anything else. Was my father someone else? And if he was someone else, who was I?”
This quote is talking about Elio thinking maybe his dad is also bisexual, because of a talk they had. First off, the “talk” they had was awful and homophobic, and if the author was trying to make it heartfelt and accepting, he failed greatly. Secondly, this quote makes it seem like you become a different person once you come out - which you DON’T - and that’s a really bad lesson to teach.
Other things:
The writing style. It’s just NOT attractive at all, it’s so completely confusing and makes no sense. There are page-long paragraphs where dialogue it clumped together, so you really have no idea who’s saying what. And there are SO. MANY. METAPHORS. No 17-year-old thinks like that! I’d say about 70% of this book is just metaphor after metaphor after metaphor - there’s hardly any true dialogue or scenes, just explanations about what’s going on inside Elio’s head (and Elio’s head is extremely boring, sadistical, and just really creepy).
It’s SO BORING. Other than the stupid nonsense metaphors, literally nothing happens. Well, things happen, but they aren’t really things. This book lacks description - of characters, actions and places - and so even when there’s dialogue or they go somewhere and do something, I found myself skipping over large chunks of it (again, because of the insane amount of metaphors).
Elio is 17, and Oliver is 24. The 7-year age gap wouldn’t be a big deal if they were both older, but in the USA - at least - it’s an illegal relationship. It just adds to the creepiness and authoritative nature of this whole story and the author definitely should have thought about that beforehand.
The fact that they call each other by their own names - yeah, that’s the name of the book, but wHy?! It just seems really self-fulfilling and narcissistic, and the author honestly never really explains WHY it’s a thing. It makes absolutely no sense.
The peach scene. The freaking peach scene. Everything - EVERYTHING - is wrong with it. That never should have been written. I hope it’s not in the movie. I think it’s in the movie. Why is there a movie of this book?!?
A big problem I have with this is that while Elio is bisexual the author of the book is straight and obviously doesn’t view bisexuality in the best light. Elio is intimate with both a woman - Marzia - and Oliver at the same time, and doesn’t see a problem with it. At all. He even says, multiple times, he doesn’t feel a need to mention it to either of them. Even though it means he’s cheating on them both. Throughout the book he also talks about wanting to be with other women/men for no reason other than that they’re there. So to me, that’s the authors way of saying “just because the main character is bisexual doesn’t mean he actually cares about who he’s with or their emotions - as long as he’s with both genders to make him bisexual.” It’s really offensive.
Elio and Oliver don’t really have a romance or relationship - they have copious amounts of lust and confusion. If I had read this when I was younger, I would have been really confused about what love was actually meant to be. Because this is not love; there is no love or romance in this book. It’s just really boring and sadistic.
Overall: No. This is not a good book. This reads like a really bad, really long fan fiction where nothing actually happens, the author just wanted to write a book. It ends with Oliver married to someone and Elio basically alone and grumpy, and so the whole thing was pretty pointless. I think the author was trying to make the reader feel emotions, but I felt absolutely nothing the whole time (aside from boredom, that is). So I guess if you want to be bored and slightly horrified, read this book, but otherwise keep far, far away from it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Pedophilia, and Toxic relationship
Moderate: Infidelity and Sexual content