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*no spoilers below
P.S. At least read the quotes at the bottom
Hi There,
Today I am going to share some of my thoughts on 'Call Me By Your Name" by Andrè Aciman.
Shattered. This book is like an arrow to the heart. Aciman moved me in a way that is blatantly distinguishable from the way any other text has impacted me. I cry in almost every romance novel at one page or another for reasons that can be blamed on my particular solidarity. This time I cried right through, from the first part to the last, and I consistently sobbed for at least the last 50 pages. Though I wasn't crying because it made me feel lonely, it didn't even make me feel too sad in the understandable sense of the word.
The diction was so raw, and so viciously humane that I was literally moved to tears because my brain didn't know how to process what was going on.
If you've ever seen the film you'd understand the nature of the passion between two men. I feel like the film captured it as best a film could do. Though if it was a stage play I feel like a few asides could have done some justice. What the film didn't capture was the way in which Elio talked about Oliver, about his parents, his music, his books and B. (which I discovered to be Crema in Tuscany) .This is what makes the book so transcendent.
The plot is decent, the scenery is quite literally perfect but the speaker is what makes you think so deeply every time you put your book down. About all the things you've read and the places the book has taken you and all the things you continue to read about the world around you. It changes that instant. The amount of wisdom in this book contains is far more than I could begin to understand and far more than my sane mind should rightfully attempt to understand.
The novel was written as a recounting from decades in the future, something the readers didn't quite discover until the final 20% of the book. Upon reflection, the nostalgic tone was something I couldn't quite grapple but made the world of sense once you reached that particular point in the book when Aciman makes it make sense. Twenty or thirty pages into the piece, a hundred or so pages from anything fashioned for direct dejection you start to feel so horribly hollow. Like when you know something's about to go terribly wrong in the middle of an unavoidable conversation.
I don't know how Aciman did this extraordinarily powerful flashback, but I hate to say I am a little jealous of how well it was executed.
On a final note, the impact of having such a glorious piece of literature which is representative of the LBGTQI+ community is so immensely powerful and moving. I couldn't imagine how much further this would touch ones soul if you were searching for a story which normalises something so abundant and gay. In that case, I am not here to convince you to read this book, but if I haven't convinced you by now then I should be quite disconcerted.
I say we are all Elio aren't we? and we all wish we were a bit more Oliver.
Wonder amongst the stars.
All the love xx
MY FAVOURITE QUOTES
if you can’t say “yes,” don’t say “no,” say “later.”
“Is it better to speak or die?”
If youth must canter, then who’ll do the galloping?
you pay for a smile by the shot glass
I began, reluctantly, to steal from the present to pay off debts I knew I’d incur in the future. This, I knew, was as much a crime as closing the shutters on sunny afternoons.
“People who read are hiders. They hide who they are. People who hide don’t always like who they are.”
“Call me by your name and I’ll call you by mine,”
And we’ll want to call it envy, because to call it regret would break our hearts.”
Nature has cunning ways of finding our weakest spot.
Time makes us sentimental. Perhaps, in the end, it is because of time that we suffer.
