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Katrina asked this question about Call Me by Your Name:
Why did Oliver get married? Wasn't he still in love with Elio?
Deborah Yaffe I think the explanation for Oliver's choice is deliberately left ambiguous, because the story stays so intensely in Elio's point of view. Perhaps Oliv…moreI think the explanation for Oliver's choice is deliberately left ambiguous, because the story stays so intensely in Elio's point of view. Perhaps Oliver is bisexual; perhaps he thinks a more conventional life will be easier or better for his career; perhaps he wants children; perhaps he doesn't have the courage to try to live at the pitch of intensity that he and Elio have sustained during their weeks together; perhaps, as Alex suggests below, he doesn't think that intensity could be sustained and would rather affirmatively choose to surrender it at its peak than see it wither over time.

What I think the (incredibly beautiful and sad) final pages of the book suggest is that he and Elio have both come to see what could only be understood in retrospect: that what they had was unique, irreplaceable, unrepeatable. But at the same time, they've also come to see that this is true of much that happens to us: every choice means a road not taken in a parallel life. Every life is like the Basilica of San Clemente, in which each new structure is built on the ruins of what came before. We are who we are in part because of what we've lost. (OK, now I'm going to start crying again. . .)

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Call Me by Your Name
by André Aciman (Goodreads Author)
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