Call Me by Your Name

Plot summary

The narrator, Elio Perlman, now living in the United States, remembers the time when he was 17 years old in 1988 and living in Italy with his parents. It was 1988, and each summer his parents would take in an academic house guest who would live in house for six weeks, revise a book manuscript, and help his father, a professor, with his academic paperwork. Elio is not particularly thrilled with this tradition, because among other things it means he will have to give up his room for a few weeks and move to a lesser room, which he mainly remembers as the one where his grandfather died.

The guest, Oliver, arrives clad in beach wear, and Elio immediately notices his carefree and detached attitude ("Later!" is his way of saying goodbye), which is in stark contrast to Elio's introverted character. This is despite the fact that Elio has actually picked Oliver as a house guest himself, hoping for "instant affinities" between them.

Oliver settles in quickly, mastering the art of dinner conversation with Elio's father and immediately opens a bank account, which later turns out to be necessary for playing poker in town. Elio acts as a tourist guide for Oliver and tries to win him over and impress him with, among other things, his piano transcriptions and guitar playing. However, Oliver responds with seeming indifference or even enmity.

Several days later, Oliver grabs Elio's arm after tennis but Elio moves away, fearing that he would simply lose control of himself and sink into Oliver's arms. Elio discovers that Oliver is also Jewish, as he is himself, and this idea of another kind of bond between them, i.e. their Jewishness, excites him. However, despite his recognition of his own bisexuality and sexual desire for Oliver, Elio doubts that someone with such a carefree, laid back attitude as Oliver could be interested in him.

Time passes, in which Oliver lies next to the pool and works on his manuscript, while Elio works on his transcriptions in the garden, carefully observing Oliver and noting among other things that Oliver's current mood corresponds to the color of the bathing suit he chooses to wear that day, with blue apparently indicating a maximum of sexual playfulness. Oliver is well liked by everyone and becomes friends with Vimini, a ten-year-old girl from the neighborhood with genius-level IQ who has leukemia.

One day, Elio sneaks into Oliver's room and puts on his red bathing suit, then proceeds to masturbate on Oliver's bed. A bit later, their relationship finally becomes physical when Elio admits his attraction to Oliver and they kiss on a berm where Claude Monet had supposedly painted some of his pictures. But when Elio touches Oliver's penis through his clothes, Oliver rejects him.

In the following days, the mood between Elio and Oliver is very cool, and Elio starts an affair with Marzia, a local girl around his own age. Seeking resolution between him and Oliver, Elio slips a note under Oliver's bedroom door and they decide to meet at midnight. When the time comes, Elio sneaks into Oliver's room and they have sex. However, the next day Elio feels guilty about this sexual encounter and decides he is not interested in a repetition.

However, this time Oliver takes the initiative, wearing Elio's bathing suit for breakfast, mirroring Elio's earlier fetishistic behavior. Later Oliver orders Elio to take off his pants in his room, then fellates him briefly. Elio is first taken aback by this but then realizes his attraction persists and that he would also like to experience more sexual encounters with Oliver.

Elio visits Marzia's house and has sex with her; in the afternoon he lies on his bed masturbating with a cut-open peach and ejaculates inside it. Later Oliver visits Elio's room, tastes the peach and its contents, and then has anal sex with Elio.

Before returning to the United States, Oliver wants to spends three days in Rome and Elio decides to accompany him. Their stay is pleasant, and includes poetry readings and intellectual discussions. Elio also admits that an errand boy had made a pass at him in Rome three years earlier.

After Oliver has left, Elio returns to his parents' house, only to find with displeasure that his belongings have already been moved back to his original room, with all traces of Oliver's visit gone. Later Elio has a discussion with his father in which his father says that he very much approves of the friendship (and relationship) between him and Oliver, unlike other parents might.

Oliver visits the Perlman family again during Christmas and announces his intent to marry next summer. Elio later sends him a letter to tell him that Vimini has died in the interim, but other than that, communication between Elio and Oliver ceases for several years.

Fifteen years later, Elio visits Oliver in his New England college town where he is a professor. Elio balks at the idea of meeting Oliver's wife and children and admits that he is still attracted to Oliver and jealous of his wife and family. Oliver has been following Elio's academic career in the intervening years via web searches, so it seems the attraction persists on both sides. Oliver also shows Elio a memento he had taken from Elio's bedroom in Italy, a framed photo which was originally a gift from Maynard, a previous summer visitor (who may also have harbored a sexual interest in Elio). During a final meeting in a bar, Elio and Oliver muse that people can lead two parallel lives, one in reality and one in their fantasy life which is denied to them in reality due to outside forces.

Twenty years after their first meeting and one year before the narrator's present, Oliver pays another visit to Elio's house in Italy. They remember their time together in this place, and Elio tells Oliver that his father has died in the meantime and he has spread his ashes in several places all over the world. The novel concludes with Elio as the narrator remarking to the reader that if Oliver ever really loved him and remembered everything as he said he did, he should once more "look me in the face, hold my gaze, and call me by your name."

Reviews

Reviewing Call Me By Your Name for The New York Times, Stacey D'Erasmo called the novel "an exceptionally beautiful book." Writing in The New Yorker, Cynthia Zarin said, "Aciman’s first novel shows him to be an acute grammarian of desire." In The Washington Post, Charles Kaiser said, "If you have ever been the willing victim of obsessive love--a force greater than yourself that pulls you inextricably toward the object of your desire--you will recognize every nuance of André Aciman's superb new novel, 'Call Me by Your Name.'"

Awards

At the 20th Lambda Literary Awards, the novel won in the category Gay General Fiction.

Film Adaptation

Italian director Luca Guadagnino is directing an adaptation of the novel starring Armie Hammer, Timothée Chalamet, and Michael Stuhlbarg. Filming started in May 2016 and the film is expected to be released in 2017. Sufjan Stevens will be contributing original music to the film's soundtrack.