Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman

Coming of age story set in Italy about the space to look for your feelings and identity.

I remember accompanying a friend to see this film at the cinema when it came out, a friend even more into films than I was. It seems forever ago now, but I was thinking of the beautiful cinematography of DP Sayombhu Mukdeeprom in Luca Guadagnino’s beautiful picture, and wanted to watch it again and read the book quickly after .

Lying in the 1980s Italian Riviera, Call Me By Your Name tells the story of 17-year-old Elio Perlman over one sultry summer that transforms his life. Elio's intellectually oriented, sophisticated family takes in an American graduate student named Oliver, a young man in his mid-20s, to help Elio's father with research. A quiet, gradually developing attraction between Elio and Oliver is kindled over the course of the summer and forms a fiery, fleeting love affair.

The novel is told in Elio's reflective, passion-filled voice, sweeping through the steam of their illicit summer with each other and barely attending to the following years, during which the memory of all that remains shapes Elio's understanding of love, loss, and what he is.