Andre Aciman
Completed 4/8/2018, reviewed 4/8/2018
5 stars
A book hasn’t touched me like this in years. It brought up so many emotions for me. I felt like I had connected deeply with Elio,
the main character. The first half of
the book is much like the movie. But the
second half is very different. And it’s the
last chapter that really got to me.
The book is about a 17-year-old boy summering in Italy with his
family on their estate. The family has a
tradition of inviting a grad student to come stay with them for six weeks
during the summer to work on their publications in exchange for helping Elio’s professor
father with paperwork. This year Oliver
is the graduate student and Elio develops a crush on him.
The book is told in first person by Elio. Much of it is his obsessive thinking about
Oliver, as well as on life and love. There
isn’t much dialog. There’s a lot of very
long sentences that signify the obsession.
It delves into the personhood of Elio and what he’s going through being
in love with Oliver and not knowing how to convey this to him.
I guess the reason I so deeply related to the book was
because I had a relationship with a graduate student when I was 19. He was about four years older than me and
straight. I guess technically, he was bisexual. He wasn’t my first, and unlike Elio, I
already knew I was gay. I fell head over
heels for him, even though he couldn’t give me what I wanted, that is, a long-term
gay relationship. This book reminded me of
that time in college, even though the comparison to my life and the book is not
that close. It was still a time of
confusion and crush and at times obsession.
I can’t give this book anything but five stars. It speaks very honestly about first love and
all the emotions that come with it. It
touched me in places I wasn’t aware I’d be revisiting after all these
years.
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