Call Me By Your Name | Andre Aciman | Book Review

Monologues exhaust me. So does mirthless, one-dimensional characters. And I hate books that have no chapters. I also hate books that claim to be ‘romances’ when they are most certainly not. 

‘Nough said. 

The book provoked not a single tear, failed to establish any connection with either of the characters, and attempted over-sexualization of every little thing - from toes to apricots to poops (yes, you read it right). 

I was promised a romance but all I got was an exhausting, problematic (why is a university professor having sex with high school students?), fetishist, ‘wtf am I reading’ cringe-fest of no less than 348 pages. Call Me By Your Name is what I imagine Wattpad ‘romances’ would read like - unnecessarily edge, over the top, over-sexualized, one-dimensional, and passing mostly disgusting and creepy behavior as romantic. Altogether, ninety percent of the book reads like a diary of an infatuated, horny teenager who fantasizes day & night about sex with a grown man, interspersed with perverted actions that often cross the threshold of the normal and become outright disgusting. If this is how the mind of a teenage boy works, I don’t wanna know. I was better off without the knowledge of a seventeen-year-old violating a fruit and comparing it with a rape victim, sniffing and tasting their crush’s underwear & being disappointed in not finding hair, or sexualizing not only the action but also the contents of taking a dump. 

Also, I really, really hate the book-full of lengthy, pretentious paragraph-like sentences that tries too hard to add glamour to the words and turn the entire thing into ‘art’ for the sake of the aesthetics. 

The only good thing about the book, which I have forced myself to reconcile out of obligation to the time & effort I had put into reading it, is the ending. And there are two reasons for this: one, because it’s ending, finally (I could no longer tolerate even ten more pages of Elio’s over-the-top monologues); and two, the last part felt more mature, was warmer, and had a touch of melancholy that drifted into my senses after over 300 pages of indifference. Besides the ending, there are some lines that I like that do not pronounce some profound philosophical revelations but merely repeat simple realizations in pretty words. Other than these (for which I have rated the book 2 stars instead of 1), the rest of the book is a big fat disappointment.  

A few excerpts to give you a little bit of taste (no pun intended):

“I picked it up, never in my life having pried into anyone’s personal belongings before. I brought the bathing suit to my face, then rubbed my face inside of it, as if I were trying to snuggle into it and lose myself inside its folds—So this is what he smells like when his body isn’t covered in suntan lotion, this is what he smells like, this is what he smells like, I kept repeating to myself, looking inside the suit for something more personal yet than his smell and then kissing every corner of it, almost wishing to find hair, anything, to lick it, to put the whole bathing suit into my mouth, and, if I could only steal it, keep it with me forever, never ever let Mafalda wash it, turn to it in the winter months at home and, on sniffing it, bring him back to life, as naked as he was with me at this very moment. On impulse, I removed my bathing suit and began to put his on. I knew what I wanted, and I wanted it with the kind of intoxicated rapture that makes people take risks they would never take even with plenty of alcohol in their system. I wanted to come in his suit, and leave the evidence for him to find there.”

“It would never have occurred to him that in placing the apricot in my palm he was giving me his ass to hold or that, in biting the fruit, I was also biting into that part of his body that must have been fairer than the rest because it never apricated—and near it, if I dared to bite that far, his apricock.”

“What a crazy thing this was. I let myself hang back, holding the fruit in both hands, grateful that I hadn’t gotten the sheet dirty with either juice or come. The bruised and damaged peach, like a rape victim, lay on its side on my desk, shamed, loyal, aching, and confused, struggling not to spill what I’d left inside.”

“We had never taken a shower together. We had never even been in the same bathroom together. “Don’t flush,” I’d said, “I want to look.” What I saw brought out strains of compassion, for him, for his body, for his life, which suddenly seemed so frail and vulnerable. “Our bodies won’t have secrets now,” I said as I took my turn and sat down. He had hopped into the bathtub and was just about to turn on the shower. “I want you to see mine,” I said. He did more. He stepped out, kissed me on the mouth, and, pressing and massaging my tummy with the flat of his palm, watched the whole thing happen.”

Yes, you read them all right. (Read the book only if you can handle these. Otherwise don’t bother.)

I do not know what misfortune has befallen all those wondrous romances that left our souls aching and hearts bleeding. People will consume absolutely anything nowadays and romanticize anything & everything just for the sake of it. 

One may ask, and they would be right to wonder, why did I continue reading the book? I could have DNFed the book, yes. And I wanted to DNF it so much right after the bathroom thing. It was the breaking point. But I kept reading it because I was desperate to find the treasure that the book apparently held for so many readers all over the world. I was desperate to see it through to the end.  

My ultimate verdict? Overrated. 

Guess I’ll never understand why people love this book so much.