Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman — A Reflective Review

I read Call Me by Your Name while revising my own novel.

Why I Read Call Me by Your Name

At that point, I have already written ten chapters of a women’s fiction x self-development x erotica project and I am beginning the slow work of reviewing the first draft. I am not reading for escape. I am reading to study, to understand what draws me in as a reader, what resists me, and how other authors handle interiority, desire, and voice.

The book was recommended to me by a young librarian, partly because it is written in the first person and functions almost like a diary: deeply introspective, intimate, and anchored in the inner life of its narrator. On paper, it made sense for where I am creatively right now.

I read it on an airplane, which turned out to matter more than I expected. I felt committed to finishing it, almost trapped with it until the end. The experience wasn’t unpleasant, but it wasn’t effortless either. I read with resistance, with the quiet impatience of someone who knows this book is beloved by many and wants to understand why.

I often couldn’t wait to be done.
And yet, I stayed.

What This Book Is About (Without Spoilers)

This is undeniably a summer book. It’s warm, slow, and driven almost entirely by desire. Desire for bodies, for identity, for meaning. It explores controversial forms of freedom: a relationship between two men, an age gap, a teenager still shaping his sense of self, and a world, at least his, that refuses labels or explanations.

The first place I feel the book is physical. Certain scenes are arousing — directly so, without metaphor or apology. The sexuality is raw and unchoreographed. There is no attempt to soften it or justify it which I love very much.

At the same time, something opened in my chest. The narrator’s freedom. His lack of concern for convention, his intellectual curiosity, his willingness to want without restraint were liberating. He confronted me with how far removed I was from that kind of freedom at that age. And perhaps still am.

How Desire Is Treated in the Novel

Desire in this book is obsessive rather than romanticized. It consumes more than it reassures. Although the characters are highly cultivated; they are artists, writers, musicians; desire itself is not intellectualized. Wanting comes first. Meaning follows later, if at all.

The erotic charge in the book felt as emotional as visual, and fundamentally primal. Emotion is treated as a consequence rather than a driver. The wanting leads; interpretation catches up.

There is one moment in particular; the first sexual encounter; that made me pause. Not because it was beautiful, but because it was honest. Honest about fear, hesitation, regret, and the immediate return to desire anyway. That tension between wanting and the terror of crossing an irreversible line felt deeply true.

What Worked for Me

From a craft perspective, the voice fascinated me. It is intrusive, raw, and private to the point of discomfort. And yet, the book never labels its characters. There is no naming, no categorizing. It simply presents experience as it unfolds.

The language both confesses and shows. Aciman dares to describe what is often edited out, and I appreciated that audacity, that refusal to decide in advance what is acceptable to say.

What Didn’t Work for Me

Where I struggled most was with the pace. There is a great deal of waiting and very little action, at least to my taste. Time stretches, sometimes to the point where emotional territory feels revisited rather than deepened. While I understand this as an intentional choice; this is a summer story, after all; it requires more patience than I naturally have as a reader.

Interestingly, I like the book more now, after finishing it, and after watching the movie, than I did while reading it. I suppose it’s because I understand what it clarified for me.

What This Book Taught Me as a Writer

I am a reader and a writer who needs rhythm. I need shifts, movement, changes in pace. I need action to interrupt introspection — not to escape it, but to keep it alive. I expected to love this book more while reading it; instead, I loved what it taught me afterward.

I loved the romance. I loved the complexity. I loved the setting: Italy in 1987, books and music, open parents, long afternoons weighted with heat. But the slowness asked more patience than I naturally have.

That isn’t a criticism.
It’s a mirror.

This book didn’t change me.
But it clarified me.

And sometimes, that’s the most useful kind of reading.

Who this book is for

Readers who enjoy introspective, slow-burning stories centered on desire, identity, and emotional ambiguity.

Who might struggle with it

Readers who need narrative momentum, frequent shifts in pace, or plot-driven storytelling.