Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman 📘 Review

 

How does a teenage boy feel when he falls in love for the first time? What is going on in his head when he desires another man even though a homosexual relationship is considered reprehensible?

Elio is an artistic but quiet teenager. Every year his family accepts a postgraduate student to spend the summer with them in Italy. This year, Oliver visits them, and Elio can't stop thinking of this confident American. Will his desire overcome the shame associated with being attracted to another man in his small and old-fashioned village?

Elio recalls all the emotions and thoughts he had as a teenage boy when he first saw Oliver until twenty years after their life-changing relationship. The book is divided into four parts. The first two parts, where Elio recounts meeting and having a crush on Oliver, provide limitless access to Elio's teenage mind. Although some of the thoughts discussed might sound extreme and excessive, the intensity and the uncertainty experienced when falling in love make all these thoughts feel like an accurate and raw account of the mental state of a teenager in love. The third part, which is a long description of a night out in Rome, seems to function as a transition from adolescence to adulthood since Elio listens to other people and enjoys socialising, instead of being immersed in his own thoughts and worries. Unfortunately, Elio is too passive and inactive during this outing, which makes the whole chapter boring after a while. The last part feels a bit rushed and dry as it probably mimics Elio's adult life; we don't have any of his early long passages with grand statements and poetic narration. 

Although I would personally like to know the exact place and year the story takes place, the combination of readers knowing few details about the setting and characters avoiding talking about homosexual inclinations and actions overtly hints at the persistence of sexuality-related taboos in all kinds of societies—both conservative and modern. This is why all the pondering and the shame Elio does and feels about challenging what he thought was the role and the duty of a man are justified. 

My review would be incomplete if I didn't mention the main criticism both the book and the film based on the book get; the inappropriate age gap between the protagonists. Elio is seventeen years old, and Oliver is twenty-four years old. Despite being advertised as a romance, the fact that not only does Elio overfocus on Oliver but also even years after that summer, Elio describes the occasions he meets with Oliver in detail while he briefly and vaguely talks about his own life shows how little Elio cares about himself since he prioritises Oliver's thoughts and feelings over his own. Thus, the abrupt substitution of the poetic and unapologetically long account of Elio's overthinking for realistic description of events can be interpreted as Elio losing his personality—without even realising it—after getting involved with Oliver and trying to be more like who he thought this older man was. 

To sum up, Call Me By Your Name accurately portrays all the agony, the uncertainty and the overthinking that someone who falls in love for the first time experiences while also subtly—maybe too subtly—shows the impact the first love can have on one's life later, especially if there is power imbalance. 

My favourite passage:

It came to me like an undefined, nebulous feeling, part arousal, part homesickness, part metaphor. You travel to a place because you have this picture of it and you want to couple with the whole country. Then you find that you and its natives haven't a thing in common. You don't understand the basic signals which you'd always assumed all humanity shared. You decide it was all a mistake, that it was all in your head. Then you dig a bit deeper and you find that, despite your reasonable suspicions, you still desire them all, but you don't know what it is exactly you want from them, or what they seem to want from you, because they too, it turns out, are all looking at you with what could only be one thing on their mind. But you tell yourself you're imagining things. And you're ready to pack up and go back to Rome because all of these touch-and-go signals are driving you mad. But then something suddenly clicks, like a secret underground passageway, and you realize that, just like you, they are desperate and aching for you as well. And the worst thing is that, with all your experience and your sense of irony and your ability to overcome shyness wherever it threatens to crop up, you feel totally stranded. I didn't know their language, didn't know the language of their hearts, didn't even know my own. I saw veils everywhere: what I wanted, what I didn't know I wanted, what I didn't want to know I wanted, what I'd always known I wanted. This is either a miracle. Or it is hell. (p. 191)

My rating: 4 / 5 💛