Call Me by Your Name

While in Italy, I read Call Me By Your Name by an author whose work I greatly admire: Andre Aciman. I’ve read all of his novels and absolutely love his writing style. When I fall in love with an author’s work I become desperate to meet them, to see how these people with these beautiful minds move around in the real world, what they look like, how they talk. I had the opportunity to attend one of his book readings at one of my favorite bookstores on Prince Street in Soho, NYC. I was surprised at how much I did not warm up to Aciman in person; he came across as self-obsessed, affected and oozing disdain for the world around him. It’s ironic how we can expect someone we don’t know to be a certain way, and then be disappointed and feel betrayed when they’re not.

 I am still a huge fan of Aciman’s writing. His precision with language is impeccable, meticulous, spot on. His own mixed identity informs much of his writing – born in Egypt to a Jewish Turkish family, speaker of Italian and French and raised partly in Italy, current American citizen, Aciman speaks frequently about his identity.  Linked to this, other common themes in his work are belonging or not belonging, searching for a home that may or may not exist, nostalgia for a time and place we can’t define, longing to be understood for who we truly are whether we are even able to articulate it or not. Perhaps due to my own mixed background, these themes resonate strongly with me.

Call Me by Your Name is a novel that takes place in an old family home in the Italian countryside, where the parents of the main character Elio host a different academic every summer to allow them a space to work on their research. They inevitably become part of the family, spending long, lazy summer hours discussing history, philosophy, linguistics, literature and manuscripts. Young Elio immediately develops an infatuation for the charming and carefree summer guest Oliver, and what unfolds is a story of desire, anticipation, longing, and the aching and urgent need to be seen, understood, and recognized. The Italian setting is part of the story, with the two young men biking through the picturesque countryside and drinking at bars in the piazzas, walking to the beach or lounging by the pool under the Mediterranean sun, plucking apricots from trees in the orchard, debating the etymology of ‘apricot’ and allowing their imagination and lust to infuse the fruit with a symbolic sexuality. The whole book simmers with sensuality, angst and infatuation. When, in a moment of intimacy, you can call someone else by your own name, you have discovered within them something of yourself that goes deeper than what any physical union can express… Aciman’s writing is simply stunning.