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Call Me by Your Name: A Novel
by Andre Aciman
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$14.00 |
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$11.20 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. |
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$2.80 (20%) |
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Paperback
Publisher: Picador
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year A Washington Post Best Fiction Book of the Year A New York Magazine “Future Canon” Selection A Chicago Tribune Favorite Book of the Year One of The Seattle Times’ Michael Upchurch’s Favorite Books of the Year An Amazon Top 100 Editors’ Picks of the Year An Amazon Top 10 Editors’ pick: Debut Fiction (#6) An Amazon Top 10 Editors’ pick: Gay & Lesbian (#1) Call Me by Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents' cliffside mansion on the Italian Riviera. During the restless summer weeks, unrelenting but buried currents of obsession, fascination, and desire intensify their passion as they test the charged ground between them and verge toward the one thing both already fear they may never truly find again: total intimacy. André Aciman's critically acclaimed debut novel is a frank, unsentimental, heartrending elegy to human passion.
| Customer Reviews: |
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| Lyrical novel of love, longing and loss |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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Aciman's novel about a 17 year old boy in love with the 24 year old graduate student who shares his parent's home for the summer has to be one of the most intense stream of consciousness accounts of longing that I've read in a while. At times, the story gets to be a bit heavy handed but the author's beautiful fluid prose keeps you reading. I would have liked the book better had it been a little shorter. It is halfway through the book before the relationship is realized and the evening in Rome with the poetry reading is uninteresting and I failed to see what it brought to the story. This is still a lovely and memorable novel.
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| pretentious, moi? |
| Customer Rating: 2 out of 5 |
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I found the 17-year-old protagonist who speaks 4 languages (at least), translates ancient texts, plays piano in the manner of any composer named (play Bach like Mozart would, hee hee - tre amusing) to be too unbelievable to be engaging. His endless emotional hand-wringing grew tiresome. The story itself had inconsistencies as though the author wrote them at different times and didn't reconcile the differences; in one passage he's bemoaning the two characters not spending time together or even speaking for days on end, and the next thing he's concerned about their "morning ritual" of bike-riding together. I didn't give it 1 star because I thought the father had some useful things to say post-affair. The title of this review refers to a Fawlty Towers episode. I found the protagonist unengagingly pretentious.
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| Worth the Read |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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I just started reading gay literature and I am glad this book was recommended to me by a friend as it set me off searching for others like it. Being younger gay man myself I found tons of relatable moments in the story and at parts had me so entwined with the characters that I went through the emotions right along with them. This novel captures the beauty of exploring human intimacy and how its effects can ripple out through a lifetime.
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| the obsession of a first love |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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CALL ME BY YOUR NAME captures so much of the novel in its title. The sickening all-consuming illness of total obsession when your sexuality awakens to an actual human being and you are lead by forces that are neither human nor spiritual even before the physical contact is made; the scent of the sheets where he has slept, the clothes he has worn, the stores he has entered; these are an intoxicating alcohol that the physical contact will eventually make sober. It is a dream, a passion and sorry am I for those who have never experienced it because the sadness afterwards is never as great as the high while it exists. Bravo Mr. Aciman--you made every delerious nerve in my body tingle all over again.
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| Destined to be a classic in gay literature |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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This book is amazing in its beauty. I thought about getting and reading it after I saw it on the NYTBR notable book list a year or two ago. I recall reading a review of it around that time that celebrated its honesty and emotional intensity. Why I just now got around to the reading is an unknown but, to coin one, better late to the party than missing completely.
This exquisite novel, by Andre Aciman, celebrates life and youth and the endless possibilities of both--detailing both "paradise" found and lost. It also justifies life's early obsessions as calibrated by innocence and desire. A precocious17 year old male, Elio, becomes obsessed with a "breezy" 24 year old American student, Oliver, living/studying one summer at Elio's family's home on the Italian Riviera. In Proustian fashion (all that may be missing is the Madeleine), what becomes a life changing/defining moment in time for Elio is thwarted by Oliver who, at summer's end, returns to the States and soon marries. One passage that may never be forgotten is upon Elio's return to his parents' home, after spending 3 finals days in Rome with Oliver (before his return to the States), there is an exalted conversation he has with his father who almost heroically tries to help Elio realize the magic and magnitude of that summer--as defined by the relationship he and Oliver shared--and what it will mean to him over time. It resonates of Mr. Marcel's reflection on both time and desire. Of course, Elio is shocked first at his father's knowledge, thinking their relationship was a well kept secret, and, later, at his insight.
This is a book I feel will stay with me for a good while. I have not felt this way toward a gay novel since finishing DANCER FROM THE DANCE more years ago than I care to admit. Read it--luxuriate in its passion, revel in its intensity, marvel at its insights.
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