Never Hollowed By The Stare

Call Me by Your Name – Andre Aciman

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’ cliff-side mansion on the Italian Riviera. Unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, at first each feigns indifference. But during the restless summer weeks that follow, unrelenting buried currents of obsession and fear, fascination and desire, intensify their passion as they test the charged ground between them. What grows from the depths of their spirits is a romance of scarcely six weeks’ duration and an experience that marks them for a lifetime. For what the two discover on the Riviera and during a sultry evening in Rome is the one thing both already fear they may never truly find again: total intimacy.

The psychological maneuvers that accompany attraction have seldom been more shrewdly captured than in André Aciman’s frank, unsentimental, heartrending elegy to human passion. Call Me by Your Name is clear-eyed, bare-knuckled, and ultimately unforgettable.

Excluding those of the M/M variety, I could proudly say I have read a lot of books. But for the life of me I could never do any in-depth intellectual review or critical analysis of any of them. I was never one for quotes or memorable lines (despite posting quotes here).

Symbolisms I could never pick up or cared about. I could appreciate the prose and how the words are strung together, the complexity of characters, the intricacies of the plot but whatever social commentary, references, metaphors or allegories present just pass me by. Call me shallow but I’m just in it for the entertainment. Therefore I might not have the mental capacity or attitude to fully enjoy this literary gem to its fullest.

Call Me by Your Name is the kind of

literary novel peopled with emotional intellectuals who namedrop dead Greek philosophers, play Brahms for fun and have informed opinions on poetry. Despite this being a smarter, classier, high brow kind of M/M, it didn’t really wow me. It’s one of those first person stories where the narrator is obsessing about a certain object of desire and nothing else. Sometimes, I find these stories tiresome and the experience claustrophobic. It brought to mind Lolita by Nabokov (which I liked, by the way), the manner in which Elio was going on and on about Oliver, the way he went about his moves and counter moves.There is really nothing going on, no mysteries to solves other than the the desired person, no monsters to defeat other than oneself. Elio’s world revolves around Oliver but I want there to be something else other than this single point. I want Elio to have something else to look forward to and not act like everything is bound to Oliver. To love the other person but still think of other things. All these pining, all these longing, most people might like all these feels but for me it’s just miserable and suffocating and appears so irritatingly hormonal to my logical self. In short, I wasn’t feeling the feelings.

Rating
2.5 Stars – far from hate but not quite a like

Soundtrack: What You Were
Artist: The Drums
Album: Portamento

(source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10706388-call-me-by-your-name)