Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman Published by Macmillan Audio on January 23rd 2007
Genres: Contemporary Fiction, Coming of Age
Pages: 248
Format: Audio Review Copy
ISBN: 0374299218
ASIN: B06ZZZXQ9G
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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.
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Regardless of what your expectations are when you begin listening to author André Aciman’s novel Call Me by Your Name, this story will likely be different from what you expected, more than you expected, and will touch you deeper than you expected. There are all sorts of reasons why I choose an audiobook. I may be asked to review a book or offered a list of books from which I may choose a book I’d like to review. I may choose the current release of an author whose work I enjoy or I may download the next episode in a series I’m following. Occasionally a book description will entice me and, of course, I’m always particularly tempted by mysteries, thrillers, and romantic suspense. With all that in mind, don’t be shocked that I chose Call Me by Your Name because of the title. There is something so poignant about those words and, to use a tired and over-used phrase, they spoke to me. I wanted to know more about the people who would think or speak those words and the circumstances that would lead to such an evocative plea. In his debut novel, André Aciman has given readers a profoundly moving look at the tortured indecisiveness of youth contrasted with the tenuous certainty that comes with age. He left me with characters whose voices I hear long after the last words have been spoken by the very talented narrator Armie Hammer.
Speaking of Mr. Hammer, one of the quotes in the promotional material I received goes as follows:“…Hammer’s voice is brimming with such melody that, if you listen to it long enough, you can probably get drunk off it.” — Vulture.com . There is nothing I can say to top this description. I will listen to this one again just to hear Mr. Hammer’s voice, but I will also listen to it again to hear Dr. Aciman’s words.
From the moment you, as a listener, enter the doors of the Italian villa which Elio Perlman and his family call home, you are treated to a rare and exquisite form of descriptive language. You will become lost in the beauty of the setting and the undercurrent of passion and obsession juxtaposed with the careless insouciance of the lifestyle. Always, with a word, a look, or a touch, the author keeps the evolving relationship between Elio and Oscar in the forefront. Dr. Aciman doesn’t judge or editorialize. Instead, he opens the hearts and minds of two characters so that we feel every emotion . . . attraction, curiosity, excitement, anticipation, desire, passion, confusion, that breathtaking need for another person that renders you helpless and leaves but one choice — to step outside the dictates of convention and risk an unknown outcome. I really don’t want to get into an in-depth review of the subject matter. Call Me by Your Name can best be described as a coming-of-age novel which openly and sensitively deals with the issues of sexuality, intimacy, and obsession. It may make some of you uncomfortable or it may push your boundaries a little. I am convinced that most people live and die and never achieve the level of intimacy with another human being which is conveyed in this book.
Many thanks to Macmillan Audio for the review copy and the sound clip from Call Me by Your Name.
Click on the Graphic to hear the audio sample.
The film version of Call Me by Your Name, starring Mr. Hammer as Oscar, is set for release in the United States in November 2017.
About André Aciman
André Aciman was born in Alexandria, Egypt and is an American memoirist, essayist, novelist, and scholar of seventeenth-century literature. He has also written many essays and reviews on Marcel Proust. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, The Paris Review, The New Republic, Condé Nast Traveler as well as in many volumes of The Best American Essays. Aciman received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University, has taught at Princeton and Bard and is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at The CUNY Graduate Center. He is currently chair of the Ph. D. Program in Comparative Literature and founder and director of The Writers’ Institute at the Graduate Center.
Aciman is the author of the Whiting Award-winning memoir Out of Egypt (1995), an account of his childhood as a Jew growing up in post-colonial Egypt. Aciman has published two other books: False Papers: Essays in Exile and Memory (2001), and a novel Call Me By Your Name (2007), which was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and won the Lambda Literary Award for Men’s Fiction (2008). His forthcoming novel Eight White Nights (FSG) will be published on February 14, 2010
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