“I was giving him every chance to put two and two together and come up with a number bigger than infinity.”
For this month’s theme of growth, I chose to review a novel that features both the growth of a young man and the growth/development of his romantic affection toward his house guest.
Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman…
This is a novel published in 2007 that follows Elio Perlman, a young and intelligent teenager summering in Italy, as a relationship blossoms between him and his family’s summer guest. The GoodReads summary of the novel describes their summer spent together as “[filled with] unrelenting buried currents of obsession and fear, fascination and desire, that intensify their passion as they test the charged ground between them,”. The novel does follow the romance between the two, but the true beauty lies in Elio’s passion. His young and almost naive longing for Elio for the older, unattainable Oliver is revealed through his narration.
