Call Me by Your Name

Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I watched the movie first, although the movie compliments the book nicely. The book has some insights into Elio's thinking that the movie failed to convey so well. Elio's obsessive over-thinking and the strange dance shy people do all rang very true for me. the prose is beautiful and engaging and I was underlining frequently.

The movie truncates and wraps up and neatly cauterizes what the book draws out into an open wound. I was weeping by the final pages over these two beautiful idiots both for what they had and that they never had and by extension perhaps for what I have had and never had. Could they not be together because of timing? Fear? A random and ultimately cruel universe? I'm not sure and I'm not sure it matters what it was specifically, but I found it affecting nonetheless. I do think of Oliver as a traitor though. In that, Elio was quite correct.

I adore this book. Like all good art, I think it changed my life.

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