"music doesn’t change us that much, nor does great art change us. Instead, it reminds us of who, despite all our claims or denials, we’ve always known we were and are destined to remain"
Following along with my ever-growing obsession with Elio and Oliver, namely the outstanding writing of Andre Aciman I thought I should share some of my thoughts on the sequel to their story.
I tried coming into my first reading with an open mind. I was entirely shattered after the first book ended and needed to take some time to recover emotionally, though I’m not sure I ever really will. I had heard a lot about people who were shocked by the structure of the book and disappointed about the lack of interaction we received between the two characters. Admittedly, beginning the book with Samuels story (Elio’s dad), threw me off a little. Elio is the star I thought, how could I possible get through the first part when all I really wanted was to hear Elio think again! Well, it turns out the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree.
Samuel was brilliant! His relationship with Miranda was insightful, passionate and refreshing though it did feel slightly out of place in a book I thought would be about Olio. I think that Aciman could have written a whole other book as a standalone about those two and I surely would have read it as well. How could any of us not when we are trying to read every last word and hoping that it never ends. This part of the book, which took up a good 35% of it in totality felt like another story, one which wasn’t totally connected to the heart of the novel until the last 11 pages. None the less, it was beautiful. I don’t feel it made me like the story any less, it only enhanced my love for the Perlman family… in a disjointed sort of way.
Moving then to Elio’ perspective, I got to know and love an older Elio who aged as we’d all hoped he would and who’s essence was very much the same. Reading his thoughts felt like visiting an old friend who you haven’t spoken to in a while, but the second you start speaking it feels as though you saw each other just yesterday. I was apprehensive watching him form a meaningful relationship with anyone other than Oliver. Just as Oliver would, half of me just wanted him to be happy after so many years and half of me resented Michel for lessening the changes the two would ever meet again. Just as I gave into the two of them, and gave up resenting Michel, Aciman changed it up again.
It was at this point that I realised, that somehow the first three parts of this story, in an intrinsic and abstract way were setting up the final part of the book. Realising that Elio and Oliver had always been missing each other, that they were never truly whole because they left the part of themselves they were always meant to be somewhere in northern Italy two decades early. Both knew that the other was their only chance at complete happiness and it only took them a lifetime to find each other again.
The part that had me sobbing was finding out that Samuel had named his child after Oliver… I’m not sure if I’ll ever justly recover from reading that. I am far more satisfied with this ending than most people. Sure, we didn’t get any spicy Tuscan villa sex this time, but somehow I liked tracking their winding road to back each other just as much. Undeniably this sure is the perfect fuel for my own romantical fantasies and maybe that’s why I adore it as I do.
Now I can live the rest of my life knowing that Elio and Oliver are together at last in some other fantastical dimension and whenever I feel that love doesn’t exist I know that it can’t be true. As two Jewish lovers are sitting beside the pool somewhere in northern Italy, likely in their billowing shirts and tiny shorts and they are both truly and madly in love with each other, and they always will be.
Before we part ways, here are some of my favourite quotes from this book for you to ponder over:
- "We only want those we can’t have. It’s those we lost or who never knew we existed who leave their mark. The others barely echo
- “As a French poet once said, some people smoke to put nicotine in their veins, others to put a cloud between them and others.”
- None of us may want to claim to live life in two parallel lanes but all have many lives, one tucked beneath or right alongside the other. Some lives wait their turn because they haven’t been lived at all, while others die before they’ve lived out their time, and some are waiting to be relived because they haven’t been lived enough.
- Death is God’s great blunder, and sunset and dawn are how he blushes for shame and asks our forgiveness each and every day.
- people may be brokenhearted not because they’ve been hurt but because they’ve never found someone who mattered enough to hurt them.”
- “Everything in my life was merely prologue until now, merely delay, merely pastime, merely waste of time until I came to know you.”
- “Love is easy,” I said. “It’s the courage to love and to trust that matters, and not all of us have both.
- I can be alone or with people, with you for instance, but I am always with him.
- Fate works forward, backward, and crisscrosses sideways and couldn’t care less how we scan its purposes with our rickety little befores and afters.”
- Time never casts shadows and memory doesn’t drop ashes.”
- No one ever went bankrupt borrowing someone else’s pleasure. We go bankrupt only when we want no one.
- I can’t even tell what I feel, though feel something I still do,
- all he needed when the time was right was simply to come and find me. “And you did.” “And I did,” he said.
All the love xx
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