Call Me By Your Name

Call Me by Your Name is a 2007 coming-of-age novel by American writer André Aciman that centers on a blossoming romantic relationship between an intellectually precocious, curious, and pretentious 17-year-old American-Italian Jewish boy named Elio Perlman and a visiting 24-year-old American Jewish scholar named Oliver in 1980s Italy. The novel chronicles their summer romance and the 20 years that follow. A sequel to the novel, Find Me, was released in October 2019. Plot summary The narrator, Elio Perlman, recalls the events of the summer of about 1983, when he was seventeen and living with his parents in Italy. Each summer, his parents would take in a doctoral student as a house guest for six weeks, who would revise a book manuscript while assisting his father with academic paperwork. Elio resents the tradition, as it requires him to vacate his bedroom so the guest can use it for the duration of their stay. Oliver, the guest for the summer, is carefree and detached—a stark contrast to Elio's introversion. Elio selected Oliver as a guest in the hopes of "instant affinities" between them and acts as his tour guide, though Elio's attempts to impress Oliver are met with indifference. Though Elio recognizes his own bisexuality and his attraction to Oliver—he is particularly excited by his discovery that Oliver is Jewish, seeing it as a bond between them—he doubts that Oliver reciprocates his feelings. One day, Elio confesses his attraction to Oliver, and they kiss on a berm where Claude Monet had supposedly painted some of his pictures. When Elio makes an advancement onto him, he rejects him.