Stone Fruit Blues

I recently checked out André Aciman's Call Me By Your Name after seeing the movie. Mainly because I enjoyed the movie, and was curious as to how the source material functioned.

The book is narrated by Elio, a young man living in Italy with his expat parents. His father is a professor of of some kind, who always has summer residents come in to work on things related to Italian projects. When the book starts, th enew residency has started with Oliver, who teaches at Columbia as a grad student moving in while he works on his books about philosophy and getting it translated into Italian.

We learn more about Elio than we ever do about Oliver, which again makes sense, since it's all told from Elio's narration. Which also means we have to deal with Elio's adolescent angst and random fantasy throughout. We observe the games Elio plays trying to draw affection from Oliver, and we see Elio as he flirts with Marzia.

Quite frankly, Elio seems to be very fluid in his expression of sexuality and awakening, although it would appear most of his attraction is for Oliver, given how often he sneaks in to Oliver's room and plays with his wardrobe.

When the two finally consummate their relationship, it appears to be very near the end of Oliver's 6 week residency and after a lot of apprehension on the older Oliver's part. They wind up going to Rome together before Oliver flies back to the states, which leads to new situations and more awakenings from Elio.

In the end, we find out that Oliver is marrying a woman in the states, although Elio tracks him down twice later in life to reconnect.

It's an engaging read, even if parts of it are quite difficult to get through, due to reawakening old angsts long forgotten in the mists of past regrets. Or for that matter, some of Elio's experiments, none of which I will go into in this space. However, if you saw the movie, there are two scenes that stick out and are indeed in the novel with a bunch of extra emotion in them.