Call Me by Your Name
SynopsisPlot
Andre Aciman's Call Me by Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents’ cliffside mansion on the Italian Riviera. Each is unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, when, during the restless summer weeks, unrelenting currents of obsession, fascination, and desire intensify their passion and test the charged ground between them. Recklessly, the two verges toward the one thing both fear they may never truly find again: total intimacy. It is an instant classic and one of the great love stories of our time.
Story
About this book
Set during the summer of 1983, Call Me by Your Name follows Elio Perlman, a 17-year-old spending the season with his family at their old villa in northern Italy. Oliver, a doctoral student, arrives to work with Elio's father for several weeks. What begins as cautious curiosity between the two gradually shifts into something far more consuming, shaped by proximity, long days, and the particular freedom of a household built around books and ideas.
The novel tracks the progress of attraction in close, sometimes uncomfortable detail. Elio narrates from inside his own uncertainty, cataloguing small gestures, silences, and the gap between what he wants and what he is willing to say aloud. André Aciman writes desire as a form of attention, where even ordinary moments carry a secondary meaning that only the person watching can decode. The Italian setting, with its heat and unhurried pace, provides a backdrop that makes both intimacy and avoidance feel equally possible.
Time is central to the story's structure. The weeks of summer impose a fixed boundary on whatever happens between the two characters, and the awareness of that limit colors every exchange. Aciman returns to the question of memory repeatedly, exploring how an experience changes shape when viewed from a distance of years.
