Kate Curtis-Hawkins's Reviews > Call Me By Your Name

Romance is incredibly hard to write, or at least hard to write in a way that is realistic. There are plenty of dime-store romance novels and mass-market paperbacks to go around the world multiple times, but it’s always seemed to me that even in more accomplished works of literature romantic relationships are always underdeveloped or are simply not believable enough to carry the emotional weight that the author intends. This is why I’ve largely stayed away from the genre for most of the time that I’ve been a serious reader, I’ve yet to find a novel that completely sells me on how the emotions develop and the romance blossoms. While Call Me By Your Name doesn’t break this particular trend, it differentiates itself from the rest of the genre in a way that is entirely unique, interesting, and compelling.

It’s not a story that’s interested in going through the typical emotions of two people meeting, growing in infatuation, and eventually falling in love with one another. Rather, the narrative here focuses on what it’s like to be wholly obsessed with another person, something beyond simple romance, lust, or infatuation but rather the desire to constantly be around that person, to yearn for them at all hours of the day, and to want nothing more than them and them alone. Elio, the narrator of the story, speaks about how he wishes to inhabit Oliver’s body, to step inside of him and be him, and Oliver asks for them to refer to one another using the opposite name so as to identify that which you desire as yourself. It’s a thematic choice that works well, and to a devastating effect by the close of the novel.

There’s never a time where Elio isn’t wholly infatuated with Oliver, at the opening of the novel he is narrating from a more advanced position so the reader never goes through the motions with the character as he learns of his desire towards his house guest. From the very beginning, he wants nothing more than to be with Oliver, and that position never moves through the course of the story, further underscoring the thematic idea that it’s obsession rather than romance. Elio himself professes that he worships Oliver at one point in the story, and rather than the statement being a romantic way of explaining extreme emotion, it’s communicated to the reader that what he’s saying is essentially honest and that the profession contains no hyperbole.

Obsession pointed towards someone we desire is a very rare thing, and it’s something that, historically, is best communicated through poetry and the writings of fantasy and mythology. It’s fitting that Mr. Aciman adopts a style of writing that matches, his prose is very poetic in its nature. There are long sentences, descriptions of places and things and people in a very romantic way, and due to the narration being within the mind of Elio the reader is privy to long emotional musings about the way he feels. In a way, Call Me By Your Name is a series of emotional soliloquy’s in response to an interaction between the protagonist and the object of his desire.

Elio begins by musing on who exactly Oliver is, and why he wants to be with him. When the reader has seen the two interact at breakfast, by the pool, and at dinner, Elio begins to muse on whether he will have any chance to act upon his feelings, his thoughts become filled not only with desire but long descriptions of anger for Oliver seemingly not reciprocating how he feels. Then as the novel moves into the third act, and the two of them begin their relationship Elio’s thoughts turn to love and how closely tied his emotions have become to his connection with another man. Mr. Aciman’s writing through all three of these phases is beautiful and it’s easily the best I’ve come across as it relates to describing the emotional investment one person has in another.

I also appreciated the fact that the novel contains no discussion of sexuality. There is no sign that the two of them are gay, or straight, or belonging to any other label. Their attraction to one another is written in a way that is completely detached from any particular orientation, they desire one another because of the person that they are, the sexual aspect of their relationship is merely a consequence of wanting to be identified with the object of their desire and to be physically attached to that which they love. Mr. Aciman could have written the characters are two women, or a man and a woman and it would have changed nothing about the story. In that regard, the story has almost nothing to do with sex, but rather the internal desire we feel towards another person, whether it be for friendship or to the point of romantic obsession.

This detachment from sexuality and intercourse thematically is why my only issue with the novel comes from the occasional vulgarity used by the author. As mentioned above, the story is largely poetic in its presentation, and when it comes to the actual moments in which the characters have sex there is little to no actual description of the act beyond how it makes Elio feel emotionally. However, there are points where Mr. Aciman writes in very graphic sexual detail, they’re uncommon and short but they come out of nowhere and clash heavily with the overall presentation of the story. I have no clue why he occasionally felt the need to include these details because they not only seem to undercut some of the thematic thrust of the novel but they also completely took me out of the immersion into Elio’s mind that is otherwise consistent through the novel.

Call Me By Your Name is one of the greatest stories I’ve read about what it means to be obsessively infatuated with another person. It’s an incredibly intimate portrait of a relationship between two people and offers a challenging look at how extreme desire can not only shape our lives but how it can also burn up. Elio and Oliver’s relationship is intense and short-lived and affects the way that both of them live their lives, but they both ultimately understand that its not something they can ever return to and so all they’re left with is their lingering impressions of one another, and the desire to be associated with each other’s name.