Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman My rating: 4 of 5 stars Elio is the son of two professors. His father is a famous historian who hires a summer graduate student to join the family on their Italian Riviera estate (who wouldn’t want that gig) and help sort research and correspondence. As the book opens, Elio is preparing to welcome the newest intern, Oliver. Oliver arrives and Elio gives him a cool reception. The frigidity between the two continues for a period before […]
Grateful to never again be a teenager
Ugh. Youths. I understand that the writing style and descriptions and the poetry in the prose are beautiful in this book, but that doesn’t solve the simple problem that we spend all 300 pages in the head of a 17-year-old and 17-year-olds are insufferable. I would have rated this book higher but it so accurately portrayed a kid in love that I couldn’t help but gag. Teenagers overthink. People with unrequited crushes overthink. Teenagers with unrequited crushes oh holy shit. Even when it turns out the crush […]
36: I honestly liked the movie (but not Armie Hammer) better
In mid-January, one of our local theaters screened the film Call Me By Your Name. I knew it was a queer love story starring Armie Hammer and some new kid, but that was about it. I didn’t know there was a novel even. I spent the first half hour of the film skeptical, but I was absolutely in tears by the end of it. I put the novel on my TBR afterward, because I wanted to see how it stacked up against the film—normally, I […]
“Look me in the face, hold my gaze. And call me by your name.”
Call Me By Your Name was one of two 2018 Best Picture nominees that I didn’t see until after the Academy Awards (the other was The Post) but damn did it rip me apart. I was perfectly happy to see Shape of Water win over Three Billboards but CMBYN was so beautiful and Timothée Chalamet was robbed so in my heart of hearts I will always been disappointed it only received one Oscar. That Oscar went deservedly to James Ivory who adapted André Aciman’s novel of the same name. I had every intention of […]