My friend G-Boo recommended Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman to me and, as a break from re-reading Lord Of The Rings, I read it lounging about in the sun in a very quiet garden. This was very sensible.
This is the story of the love affair that changes you. The one that defines you and what that does to you. At first, I was caught out by the phrasing and had to go over passages until I worked out that the Elio, the main character, is doing what we all do when we fall for someone who doesn’t seem to care: playing conversations and scenarios in his head and bargaining with the gods for a secret word, a nod, a little breathe (in the words of R.E.M.) to give us hope.
Elio’s thoughts and feelings are raw, graphic and urgent. It is not a prim book, it is honest and that means sex and mess. This is sex and mess that is brilliantly written.
Brilliantly written books are easily found if you look for them. What is not so easy to come by is brilliantly written, honest, life-affirming, hopeful books that make you glad to be alive and that you’ve read them. These books have a tendency to rip you open and make you do the full ugly cry so that when your family return after a day trip you are found using a sun lounger as a life raft to save you from drowning in your own tears. This is one of those books.
