Call Me by Your Name
first edition cover
|
|
| Author | André Aciman |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
|
Publication date
|
2007 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover and Paperback) |
| Pages | 256 pp |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 66463617 |
| 813/.6 | |
| LC Class | PS3601.C525 C35 2007 |
Call Me by Your Name is a 2007 novel by American writer André Aciman about a love affair between an intellectually precocious 17-year-old American-Italian Jewish boy and a visiting 24-year-old American Jewish scholar in 1980s Italy. The novel chronicles their summer romance and the 20 years that followed.
The narrator, Elio Perlman, now living in the United States, remembers the time when he was 17 years old in 1988 and living in Italy with his parents. It was 1988, and each summer his parents would take in an academic house guest who would live in house for six weeks, revise a book manuscript, and help his father, a professor, with his academic paperwork. Elio is not particularly thrilled with this tradition, because among other things it means he will have to give up his room for a few weeks and move to a lesser room, which he mainly remembers as the one where his grandfather died.
The guest, Oliver, arrives clad in beach wear, and Elio immediately notices his carefree and detached attitude ("Later!" is his way of saying goodbye), which is in stark contrast to Elio's introverted character. This is despite the fact that Elio has actually picked Oliver as a house guest himself, hoping for "instant affinities" between them.
Oliver settles in quickly, mastering the art of dinner conversation with Elio's father and immediately opens a bank account, which later turns out to be necessary for playing poker in town. Elio acts as a tourist guide for Oliver and tries to win him over and impress him with, among other things, his piano transcriptions and guitar playing. However, Oliver responds with seeming indifference or even enmity.
Several days later, Oliver grabs Elio's arm after tennis but Elio moves away, fearing that he would simply lose control of himself and sink into Oliver's arms. Elio discovers that Oliver is also Jewish, as he is himself, and this idea of another kind of bond between them, i.e. their Jewishness, excites him. However, despite his recognition of his own bisexuality and sexual desire for Oliver, Elio doubts that someone with such a carefree, laid back attitude as Oliver could be interested in him.
Time passes, in which Oliver lies next to the pool and works on his manuscript, while Elio works on his transcriptions in the garden, carefully observing Oliver and noting among other things that Oliver's current mood corresponds to the color of the bathing suit he chooses to wear that day, with blue apparently indicating a maximum of sexual playfulness. Oliver is well liked by everyone and becomes friends with Vimini, a ten-year-old girl from the neighborhood with genius-level IQ who has leukemia.
One day, Elio sneaks into Oliver's room and puts on his red bathing suit, then proceeds to masturbate on Oliver's bed. A bit later, their relationship finally becomes physical when Elio admits his attraction to Oliver and they kiss on a berm where Claude Monet had supposedly painted some of his pictures. But when Elio touches Oliver's penis through his clothes, Oliver rejects him.
...
Wikipedia