Ratings61
Average rating2.7
I'm so disappointed. This was just... not good and not needed. If you were hoping for more Elio and Oliver, you'll be sorely disappointed to find out that their paths don't even cross again until about 90% of the way into this book.
The first half is focused on Elio's father, Samuel, ten years after Oliver's summer in Italy. Now divorced from Elio's mother, Samuel meets a woman half his age on a train, and they fall in love instantly. I ended up skimming through a lot of this as I just couldn't make myself care. I didn't come here for Samuel's story, I came for more Elio and Oliver.
The next section is devoted to Elio and his meeting with a man twice his age (not sure what was up with the huge age gaps in this book) and their subsequent love affair. There are moments where Elio's pain over his lost love shines through and those are what kept me reading because to be honest, I didn't care about this new relationship either.
Next comes a brief section devoted to Oliver. It's approximately twenty years later and at a party in his honor, a friend plays a piece on the piano that immediately transports him back to that Italian summer so many years ago when Elio played that same piece for him. It is clear that Oliver hasn't been the same since that summer and he wonders if he should make a trip back to Italy.
This final section is where I was hoping the story would make up for all the crap that took up the first 85% of the book but sadly it didn't. The reunion between Elio and Oliver is incredibly rushed, on one page Oliver is thinking about going to Italy, and the next they're literally weeks into their visit. The intensity that was originally there between Elio and Oliver in Call Me By Your Name is severely lacking. What should be a satisfying end to their story, isn't. I wish I hadn't even bothered with this.
It's interesting how when men grow old, mature and have this deep longing they are so obsessed with Blumpkins and get off with a peach
3.5
the first half was really fun and interesting (the ramblings of Miranda's dad was a little weird tho but still charming in its own way)
it's when they tried to force the Elio and Oliver narrative the book felt like it was dragging.
Andre Aciman, in an event said that he didn't want to write for fans but for himself. Oddly the second half feels like a fan service. w/o giving away spoilers, how is it true to the personality and characteristics of Elio and Oli from the first book? I would have been happy if instead of a sequel it was just a spin-off.
Nonetheless, occasionally I was just wowoed by the proses.
It took me some time to start to read this book due to its many bad reviews. However, since it was not about Elio and Oliver I've decided to give it a chance.
I enjoy so much the way André Aciman writes that it becomes difficult to rate and analyze the story.
The book has 4 chapters, each one following the life of our beloved characters. As “Call me by your name” all of them are beautifully written.
I sort of enjoyed Elio's father and Elio/ Michael story, hence the 3 stars. I honestly don't care about Oliver, its attractions and life choices and felt tempted to quit the book.
There is one thing I strongly dislike regarding the book: The fact that the characters happiness is highly dependent of one and only person.
This was acceptable in “Call me by your name” since Elio was 17 years old and it was its first love. I think everyone has been here and felt this, being either in love or infatuated. However, as life goes on and we age, we grow, meet new people and CHANGE, and eventually, the person who was the first love is just that, someone who was part of our life.
Moreover, although love is an important part of our lives, do we need to be in love to be happy and enjoy living? I strongly believe that happiness should start in ourselves and not be dependent on others.
I do not find it believable that all of the book characters follow this same pattern.
i wasn't sure what i expected when i went into this, but i have to say i'm pretty disappointed.
the part of the book that centered on Elio's dad was honestly agonizing. if that were the whole thing, I might not have finished it. it was only after it became clear that we'd switched to Elio that i felt like i could go on.
there's a hell of a lot of...romantic and familial entanglement, i'll call it. tons of parallels and connections made (explicit and implicit) between Samuel and Miranda's dad, between other father-son relationships and Elio's relationships, and there's even the inexplicable fact that Samuel and Miranda's son is named for Oliver–Aciman states the obvious later through Elio (‘the child felt like ours'). i think the most frustrating aspect of these relationships that runs through the book is the ‘instant deep connection' thing.
i don't understand how this is...the sequel, and that it's serious...so much of it is cliché and amazingly overwrought and borderline nonsensical. there are parts of Aciman's prose that i still like, but there were probably even more parts that had me rolling my eyes or pausing in disgust. definitely feels like the kind of book only a previously-massively-successful author can get someone to publish.
anyway, if you adored CMBYN, you might just want to skip this one. if you want to read about manic pixie dream girls and wealthy middle-aged men that are dead inside, pick up one of the few Murakami books that fits the bill.
call me by your name was not enough, the author decided that he needs to extend the age gap so he formed a relationship between a professor of the age 60+ and a 20 year old something. something tells me the character was based off on the author himself. the story made 0 sense to me, she meets him on the train, have this deep philosophical nonsense conversation and then decided to abandon her sick father to go with a complete stranger?
It's just that the magic of someone new never lasts long enough. We only want those we can't have. It's those we lost or who never knew we existed who leave their mark. The others barely echo.
There is plenty to say about this book. First, one has to keep in mind this is Aciman's book not the fans (myself included).
First, in the story there are some ideas about relationships I don't agree with but that's just the author's perspective on love. What really bothered me is how instead of slowly developing the different settings, characters and so on like in Call me by your name, the author speaks from three points of view without completely explaining any of them. So that, for example, the reader doesn't get to know the characters, which at many times seem fake.
Also, reading this book I got the feeling that Aciman had some very clear images of where he imagined the characters would be in the future but didn't really know how to get there. So again, the story seems rushed at times and one can't comprehend it.
Apart from all of this, the author's writing is still so beautiful it was a pleasure to read this book.
Hated it!!!
I tried to give this a chance, I really did.
The first half was full of masturbatory straight bullshit. So much misogyny and a manic pixie dream girl—I seriously kept forgetting this was just published, in The Year of Our Lesbian Jesus 20-bi-teen, and not in the early 2000s. I honestly wish someone had told me to skip to the section called “Cadenza” in the middle of the book, so here I am, telling you to do that. All you'll miss out on is a headache.
I only kept reading in the hopes that Elio's and Oliver's POVs would be better, and they were, but not by much. I knew I would feel this way, but the ~new ending~ completely reversed so much of the point of the first book. I'm all for Happily Ever Afters for queer people, like, 95% of the time, but Elio and Oliver were never meant to be together. Their passion and desire was never going to last past a summer. Maybe that's not how everyone interpreted Call Me By Your Name, but for me, their intense and fleeting love affair was the whole point.
Overall, Aciman's writing remained sharp and poignant, with a few moments of brilliance. The story of Michel's father and the friend/lover who gifted him some mysterious sheet music was haunting and captivating. But instead of writing a whole book with new characters focused on that, Aciman decided to write this book that I would like to rename Find Me (a Sleeping Pill Because I'm Tired of Unnecessary Sequels).
This was interesting! Whatever I had expected from a sequel (and I really hadn't expected a lot. Not because I thought it would fail, but because I couldn't think of any way to continue the story of the first book), this was not it!
But I really enjoyed this book! I see it as a story that gives us updates on all the known characters' lives. This book isn't necessary in the sense that it answers any open questions or concludes the story – Call Me by Your Name still works as a stand-alone book. But Find Me does expand the universe Aciman has created (without ruining it) and is a feast for my sappy heart.
A sequel that didn't need to exist, and in my opinion turned out rather uneven and disappointing. Sami's love-at-first-sight May-December romance felt almost unbearable. Elio's May-December romance was better. And Oliver's story felt like a filler to get to the inevitable ending. Aciman riffs on his usual memory/music/repetitions themes, but this time everything just felt off. Still love [b:Call Me By Your Name 36336078 Call Me By Your Name (Call Me By Your Name, #1) André Aciman https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1519203520l/36336078.SY75.jpg 1363157] and [b:Enigma Variations 29875935 Enigma Variations André Aciman https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1465643290l/29875935.SY75.jpg 50248706] though.
“Find Me” est la suite - tant attendue par beaucoup, moi y compris - du très beau roman “Call me by your name” d'André Aciman, publié en 2007 et porté à l'écran en 2017.
“Call me by your name” racontait l'histoire d'amour, le temps d'un été, entre Elio, un adolescent de 17 ans, et Oliver, un étudiant américain de 24 ans. Dans la maison familiale d'Elio et ses parents en Italie, le jeune garçon et son aîné découvraient l'amour des hommes, jusqu'à l'heure du départ d'Oliver, laissant Elio dévasté par la perte de son premier amour.
“Find Me” se déroule des années plus tard et se compose de quatre parties de taille inégale :
- La première partie, la plus longue me semble-t-il, raconte la rencontre entre Samuel, le père d'Elio, et une jeune femme, Miranda, dans le train qui les emmène à Rome.
- La deuxième partie se déroule à Paris et relate l'aventure entre Elio, désormais pianiste professionnel, et Michel, un avocat rencontré lors d'un concert de musique classique
- La troisième partie a lieu à New York où Oliver fête son retour dans le New Hampshire après un semestre passé dans une université new-yorkaise
- La quatrième et dernière partie, la plus courte, se déroule après les retrouvailles entre Elio et Oliver, nous permettant de découvrir la suite (et fin ?) de leur histoire
Je dois dire que ce livre m'a d'abord enchanté, avant de me décevoir quelque peu. Dès les premières pages, et pendant presque toute la première partie, j'ai retrouvé le talent d'André Aciman pour parler des sentiments, avec une sensibilité que j'ai envie de comparer à celle de Stefan Zweig.
Malheureusement, la suite m'a semblé plus fade, un peu répétitive, et je me suis presque ennuyé par moment. Du coup, même les retrouvailles tant attendues entre Elio et Oliver ne m'ont pas emballé autant que je l'aurais cru, et j'ai terminé le roman avec un sentiment d'inachevé, ou d'être moi-même passé à côté de quelque chose.
Pour un roman parlant du temps qui passe, j'ai eu du mal à saisir quand se déroulaient les chapitres les uns par rapport aux autres, si des semaines, des mois ou des années les séparaient.
André Aciman écrit très bien sur le temps qui passe, sur les liens qui unissent ses personnages, mais son récit manque ici d'ampleur et de ligne directrice.
J'ai donc été déçu par cette “suite” du très beau roman qui nous avait permis de faire la connaissance d'Elio et Oliver. Finalement, ce qui m'a le plus plu dans ce récit, c'est la partie consacré au père d'Elio : déjà sympathique dans “Call me by your name”, Samuel se révèle ici un personnage profond et dont il est plaisant de suivre les pensées. Dommage que le reste ne soit pas à la hauteur.
yeah i'm just going to pretend that this doesn't exist except for the fact that elio and oliver finally end up together because it is riddled with continuity errors seeing as they've had to retcon events in order to make a sequel feasible in the first place