Hello, people of the internet!
Oh my, do I have a lot of posts to upload for you lot today as I’ll be uploading not one, not two, but three book reviews. Behold – the first post!
Title: Call Me By Your Name
Author: André Aciman
Publication date: 21st September 2017
Publisher: Atlantic Books
Pages: 256
During a restless summer on the Italian Riviera, a powerful romance blooms between seventeen-year-old Elio and his father’s house guest, Oliver. Unrelenting currents of obsession and fear, fascinations and desire threaten to overwhelm the lovers who at first feign indifference to the charge between them. What grows from the depths of their souls 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 they both already fear they may never truly find again: total intimacy.
For those who haven’t read this yet, but want to, I must point out that most of the advertisement for Call Me By Your Name has given the impression that this book is a beautiful romance between Elio and Oliver – something I’d have to disagree with. It is more about obsession and lust between two people than anything romantic in my opinion. As I went into Call Me By Your Name, thinking it was going to be very romantic as most of the advertisement made it seem to be, I couldn’t help but feel slightly odd about it, especially when it came to the fetish-like behaviour from Elio.
Another thing about Call Me By Your Name that put me off slightly was the writing. Don’t get me wrong – it was extremely poetic, quite profound in some parts and gives an incredible amount of insight into Eli’s thinking (as the book is written in first person). However, it can be very distracting when Elio goes on and on about a certain topic that really has nothing to do with the plot overall and there are sections where it is too poetic for me and I lose track of what is happening.
And yet something kept me interested. I was very curious to see what happens to Elio and Oliver and, even though a lot doesn’t happen, something about it kept me reading. The book has a certain atmosphere to it that I can’t describe. I haven’t met a cast of characters like this before and how they interact with one another isn’t like what I’ve seen before. Overall, I haven’t read a book quite like this before and I admire that.
I’ll give Call Me By Your Name 3 stars out of 5. I may have struggled through parts of it, but once I got used to the poetic writing, I couldn’t put it down.
Thank you for reading!
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