Admittedly, this book starts out almost painfully slow, with a lead-up to the romance that's near torturous when accompanied by the main character and narrator's obsessive thoughts, with the only thing keeping the reader engaged the dangling promise that these two idiots will, eventually, get together. But once it gets going, oh boy does it get going.
Let me preface my praises of this book by saying that I had a difficult, love-hate relationship with Elio (protagonist and narrator). His obsessive reading, re-reading, over-reading, over-re-reading into every little look, word, silence, and lack of look, borders on the hysterical if not out-right insane and nearly drives this book's readers (or me, at least) insane right along with him. Not to mention that it nearly breaks the taut string suspending the reader's disbelief because honestly, what teenage even speaks let alone THINKS like this? But after reaching the second act, it's quite clear that this obsessiveness is what has isolated him from his peers and why he searches to be so completely understood by someone like Oliver, who speaks his same coded language of gestures and unspoken words - even though they're often not on the same wave length.
Elio's fevered imaginings also make him an almost delightfully unreliable narrator, where something he narrates early on as fact (e.g. the cold, death-glares he'd receive from Oliver) turn out to be misguided by his prejudices and not true at all. It lends a tender, nostalgic quality to the whole thing (which is already close to bursting with nostalgia), knowing that all the events are not as they were but merely as he remembers them.
I came to realize that the story was painful to read because it was a painfully exact replica of what it is to be a teenager, and not because it was poorly written or ill-conceived. It intentionally takes its readers back to a time when your insides were on your outsides, all your feelings exposed, leaving you raw and vulnerable, so that every glance, every snide remark, especially from the person you're infatuated with, is like hot knives on your bare flesh. The reason I was so infuriated with Elio was because I was infuriated with myself, when I was a teenager, and felt and behaved the exact same way. Elio, despite his staggering intellect for a seventeen-year-old, is a profound idiot just like I was a profound idiot.
The meat of the story is the romance between our leads, slow and painful in its engineering (like a roller-coaster going up), terrifying, rocketing, elating, wonderful when it's happening (the roller-coaster plummeting), that leaves you aching, dizzy, and nauseous in its denouement (the end of the ride). You spend so much time worshiping Oliver through Elio's eyes that when he turns out to be the coward, you refuse to believe it, until you're dragged unwillingly to the book's end are slapped in the face with the reality that yes, Oliver was the coward all along.
This is probably one of the most erotic reads of the 21st century, thanks in no small part to the breathless suspense leading up to their first encounter together, but also because the author understands how sensuality is enhanced by disgust. Even though the book sometimes crosses the thin line between sexy gross and full blown gross-out (by the end of the book ALL of the bodily fluids have been prominently featured), it leaves the burning, frenzied sensuality at its core stronger for it.
I am confident that the movie adaptation (which I'll be watching soon) will be a perfect companion to this book, as it likely won't suffer from the book's flaws, such as being overly verbose, and its slow pacing on screen will probably feel more like sexual tension than having your nails being summarily torn from your fingers. Nonetheless, the novel contains some of the most stellar, quotable lines you'll ever encounter, and such gut-wrenching realism surrounding its heartbreak that you'll feel it as a hot knife across your raw skin.
If I could say one thing to this novel it would be: I'll die if you stop.
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Reviews with images
This Book Changed My Life (Not an Exaggeration:)
I’ve seen the movie countless times and listened to the audiobook (voiced by Armie Hammer). I listened to the audiobook because I was under a time crunch for a book club. However, I loved it so much that I wanted my own copy to read and leave personal notes/annotations to look back on. This book tells an incredible story that made me look at love and my own adolescence in new, beautiful ways. It takes a lot for me to become invested in a book, but I could honestly read this book within a day or two over and over again. It just takes me to the exact time and place the story is set in and leaves me romanticizing and pondering my own life. Plus, this is a beautiful copy. I highly recommend you give it a try!
Top reviews from other countries
Tory D.
This is not a book you read once....
Reviewed in Canada on November 7, 2023
maulende Myrte
Ich bin süchtig nach Oliver und Elio!
Reviewed in Germany on March 21, 2024
Noirita Das
Can't stop thinking about this!
Reviewed in India on September 9, 2022
Noirita Das
Reviewed in India on September 9, 2022
In the 80s, based on the Italian Riviera, 17 year old Elio falls deeply and irrevocably in love with Oliver, an older scholar who had come to get assistance from Elio's father for his manuscript that was to be published soon. During his stay for over six weeks with Elio's family, he evokes this swooning passion in the young boy with his charming conversation skills and very American manners. It is with great care that Aciman has directed the narrative through Elio, his burning desire for Oliver which sometimes resembled that of borderline obsession of a young boy. These profound feelings of desire on Elio's part were romantically magnified with the slightest of touch and the most mundane of events by the author. Through the characters of Elio's parents, Aciman makes way for the lovers to experience the deep aches of love and heartache in young love without any societal impediment. Aciman's words are kindred to those of a beautiful gust of wind and his characters are free in their choices of love and living. The memories of adoration and Italy amalgamated and took me into a trance that I didn't want to step out of. This is truly what a novel about romance should feel like, with its unexplainable heartbeats in the gut and feverish longing all wrapped up with incessant passion.
Images in this review
