Call Me by Your Name: A Novel
by Andre Aciman
published
January 23rd 2007
by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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binding
Hardcover, 256 pages
setting
Italy
isbn
0374299218
(isbn13: 9780374299217)
description
Call Me by Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents' h...more
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 757)
Read in February, 2008
I've just read one of those rare books that just pierces your heart with aching beauty and the richness, pain, and passion of the human experience. "Call Me By Your Name" by Andre Aciman is about a 17 year old Italian boy named Elio who falls for another young man, an American scholar just out of college, who comes to his house for 6 weeks to work with Elio's father on a book. It is an unusual household, full of talented, erudite people and young Elio is also extraordinary for his mus...more
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Read in January, 2008
I wanted to make fun of this maddening book, but really, I must just want to make fun of myself for loving it. The bare bones of the story could have been assembled using some kind of Gay Coming of Age Novel Trope Generator. Teenager. Grad student. Italian beach. Fruit. Poetry. Jealousy. Sex. Loss. More poetry.
But. I agree with whoever likens Aciman's approach to Proust's (which is probably everybody who has read both Aciman and Proust.) This is not a Gay Coming of Age Novel, at...more
But. I agree with whoever likens Aciman's approach to Proust's (which is probably everybody who has read both Aciman and Proust.) This is not a Gay Coming of Age Novel, at...more
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Read in March, 2008
Page after claustrophobic page, reading Call Me By Your Name felt a bit like trying to fall asleep with the covers pulled completely over my head -- creating a warmer, humid, slightly uncomfortable place -- because the bedroom's a bit chilly and immersed within bed covers is, despite a distinct lack of space around the body, the head, the mouth, the best place to be.
I could never fully separate from the narrator, this 17 year old kid Elio consumed by his first serious feelings for another h...more
I could never fully separate from the narrator, this 17 year old kid Elio consumed by his first serious feelings for another h...more
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From the here:
Bookslut.com says, "The hardest part of writing a review for André Aciman's powerful first novel, Call Me By Your Name, is trying not to turn it into a love letter to the author." Well, consider that challenge already lost. I'll just say it: I don't know you, André Aciman, but I adore your writing. Another reviewer says, "Call Me By Your Name may prove to be the beautiful book ...more
Bookslut.com says, "The hardest part of writing a review for André Aciman's powerful first novel, Call Me By Your Name, is trying not to turn it into a love letter to the author." Well, consider that challenge already lost. I'll just say it: I don't know you, André Aciman, but I adore your writing. Another reviewer says, "Call Me By Your Name may prove to be the beautiful book ...more
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Read in January, 2008
recommends it for:
Believers of "It is better to have loved and lost..."
I agree with the New York Times assessment that Call Me by Your Name is hot. There are scenes that gave me a guilty pleasure to read on the subway. However, there were other passages, notably in the first section, that didn't work for me because they tried to communicate analyses of the ins and outs of flir...more
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Read in June, 2008
recommends it for:
those who (secretly) obsess
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
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Read in May, 2008
The first 60-ish pages are so exciting; I love the way the narrator (Elio) analyzes his thoughts and feelings. The writing is daring, the kind of writing I wish I had written.
But the rest of the book doesn't excite me. It's another love-that-cannot-last story. Yes, there are a few beautiful moments. But too many questions remain, mainly: what keeps them apart? The world in which their relationship develops has few limits. They only have a few weeks together, but during that time, they can co...more
But the rest of the book doesn't excite me. It's another love-that-cannot-last story. Yes, there are a few beautiful moments. But too many questions remain, mainly: what keeps them apart? The world in which their relationship develops has few limits. They only have a few weeks together, but during that time, they can co...more
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Read in March, 2008
Sweet. And painful. Reading it, I WAS at times the unabashedly naive 17 year old protagonist. A testament to the infectiousness and the depth of what i was at first ready to dismiss as a trivial gay (unrequited) love story. Or maybe just a testament to my own naivete...
Perhaps wishing for some fatherly direction of my own, I absorbed these words of wisdom from said protagonist's father:
"Right now you may not want to feel anything. Perhaps you never wished to feel anything...But fee...more
Perhaps wishing for some fatherly direction of my own, I absorbed these words of wisdom from said protagonist's father:
"Right now you may not want to feel anything. Perhaps you never wished to feel anything...But fee...more
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Read in December, 2007
I had read some great reviews of this novel before starting it, and I was immediately disappointed. Despite some beautiful writing, I felt the story was going nowhere. I read 50 pages and put it aside. Then two people whose taste I respect talked about how deeply this novel had affected them, and told me I had to go back to it, and so I did. They were right: the emotional payoff was, for me, amazing. The problem at the start of the novel may have been solely mine--I tend to want a story to get g...more
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Read in January, 2008
recommended to Karima by:
Sandrarecommends it for: poetic types; lovers of beauty
Just put this book down with an audible,"aaahhhh...." It's the kind of experience one needs to sit with for a bit, very still, before moving on to something else and breaking the spell.
Debated with myself about giving it 3 or 4 stars and settled on 3 due to too much meandering and too many predictable outcomes.
HOWEVER, at times (many) it was breathtaking and almost unbearable in its white-knuckled yearnings. Also loved that the author used beautiful words like "sough."
H...more
Debated with myself about giving it 3 or 4 stars and settled on 3 due to too much meandering and too many predictable outcomes.
HOWEVER, at times (many) it was breathtaking and almost unbearable in its white-knuckled yearnings. Also loved that the author used beautiful words like "sough."
H...more
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2 comments
Aciman does a wonderful job in this novel of reconstructing young love in all its brilliant absurdity. The narrator, reflecting on his teenage self from the safety of middle age, slowly (a bit too slowly for my taste) builds the story of his obsession with Olivier, 24 to his 17. It’s a realistic description, but it’s hard for first love—at least in the unrequited stage—to avoid feeling melodramatic. (Melodrama, after all, is what teenagers are all about.) When the lovers finally come...more
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I've just re-read this book. The first time through, I thought it was a derivative of Proust. I've changed my mind. This book, like Proust, carefully delineates the complex of emotions we call love and does so in beautiful prose.
Some scholars link aesthetics with fascism. I can see how aesthetics can make fascism appealing (I can respond aesthetically to Mussolini-era architecture such as at EUR in the Roman suburbs); it's harder to see how aesthetics is fascist without fascism present, th...more
Some scholars link aesthetics with fascism. I can see how aesthetics can make fascism appealing (I can respond aesthetically to Mussolini-era architecture such as at EUR in the Roman suburbs); it's harder to see how aesthetics is fascist without fascism present, th...more
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Read in March, 2008
recommends it for:
everyone
This is going to be my very first review here on Goodreads since I can't help but stew over that which I've gained from this book. I'll not go too far but wanted to say it's certainly worthy of a slow, meaningful read for anyone. I can also say that it is interesting to note that this is a story written by a straight man about longing and obsession that just happens to be between two men.
I immediately went back to reread the last section to really take it in and will likely read this book ...more
I immediately went back to reread the last section to really take it in and will likely read this book ...more
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Read in February, 2007
recommends it for:
Readers of gay literature
This is one of the most well-written novels I've ever read. Certainly the author has studied Proust. I thought as much as I read it. After finishing I read the flaps and discovered the author is a founder of a Proust society. It is not a very long novel, nor is it about an entire society. But its focus on the dynamic between two people is, indeed, in the manner of Proust.
This is very much about seduction. Although it is largely about seduction by, and not of, the innocent, it is, indeed, also ...more
This is very much about seduction. Although it is largely about seduction by, and not of, the innocent, it is, indeed, also ...more
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Read in August, 2008
So a lot has to be said about a book that actually made me prefer the subway to a cab at 3 in the morning. This book is an addictive read that I found myself stealing time to get through as quickly as possible. Although I completely sympathized and connected with the "impossible love" scenario depicted in the book, the biggest obstacle I faced was a rather severe dislike of the central character (the narrator). Part of it stemmed from the absurd pretension of his characterization: a 17...more
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I cannot reccommend this book enough! full of raw emotion and more than once hit the spot where i felt like ive gone through many of the emotion described in this book!
Aciman's first novel poignantly probes a boy's erotic coming-of-age at his family's Italian Mediterranean home. Elio—17, extremely well-read, sensitive and the son of a prominent expatriate professor—finds himself troublingly attracted to this year's visiting resident scholar, recruited by his father from an American univers...more
Aciman's first novel poignantly probes a boy's erotic coming-of-age at his family's Italian Mediterranean home. Elio—17, extremely well-read, sensitive and the son of a prominent expatriate professor—finds himself troublingly attracted to this year's visiting resident scholar, recruited by his father from an American univers...more
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Read in September, 2008
i'm not going to lie: the last twenty or so pages of this book totally made me cry. still, i'd hesitate to recommend it to anyone (except, maybe, for that boy who came into my bookstore & said that some straight boy had broken his heart, & could i recommend something to make him feel better?). another reviewer on this site used the word "claustrophobic" to describe the experience of reading the novel, & i'd have to agree: the prose is close and obsessive, but sort of pain...more
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Read in January, 2008
recommended to Philip by:
david chapmanrecommends it for: shameless romantics
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Read in March, 2007
I found this deliberately beautiful book a bit taxing. Aciman has absorbed Proust through every pore; at points I feared it had poisoned him. The 17-year-old narrator is (too) precocious and privileged, and he takes far too long to yield to his exquisite (and endlessly articulated) whorls of desire. The first third of the book glows with a kind of magic; the middle achieves an almost unbearable statis — but stay with it! — because the last third is luminous. The long scene set in Rome, which...more
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Read in May, 2008
Just as no two authors would approach the same story in exactly the same way, no two readers will be stirred in the same way from their story. Or, maybe I assume wrongly that most people bring their own personal experience with them as they read a story (I identify with this character? How could this one be such a shithead?) Anyway, for me, at this moment in my life, this was one of the best books I've read. I've never been pulled into the feelings of the character in such a vivid, detai...more
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