Call Me By Your Name - André Aciman
Call Me By Your Name is my partner's favourite book, and she's been asking me to read it for a while now. I finally did, and I'm very glad I made time for it.
I knew this was a romance, and I knew it was erotic. Even though I've heard people talk about the famous peach scene, I was still surprised by how explicit this is. It's raw and vulgar and primal and unflinching but it's still also tender, slow, and incredibly beautiful. This is a real achievement.
Aciman's prose is magic. Reading the early chapters (or more accurately, the first half of the book) feels like a dream, like a long hot afternoon drinking wine in the sun with no cares and no responsibilities. Part of this is down to the way Aciman presents his locations, with no names other than an initial (most of the novel occurs in a place known only as "B."). This lack of specificity adds an air of unreality to the languid prose that really sells the atmosphere of a long nostalgic summer.
Once we move to part 3 and Elio and Oliver's trip to Rome things change. We're suddenly faced with the hard reality of the city, its warren of named streets and its crowds of anonymous revellers. The dream shatters, never to be repaired as we make our slow way toward the end of the book and the rest of Elio and Oliver's lives.
Despite the fact that in terms of pure plot not a lot really happens in the book, it's as gripping and compelling as a thriller. Aciman pulls us into this world and makes us long to stay here forever. I wanted to drop everything so I could go and smoke in the Italian sunlight for six weeks, and turning the final pages left me with the same sense of loss and longing as Elio recounts in his last moments with Oliver.
This is really something special, and I'm delighted I finally got around to reading it.