Book Talk: Find Me: A Novel by André Aciman
November 25, 2019
"[Find Me] is a lyrical meditation on being forced to move to another location after the party’s over, on the Sisyphean task of trying to replicate the magic of young passion . . . it strikes an affectingly melancholy chord.” ―Josh Duboff, The New York Times Book Review
In this spellbinding exploration of the varieties of love, the author of the worldwide bestseller Call Me by Your Name revisits its complex and beguiling characters decades after their first meeting.
This is the story
No novel in recent memory has spoken more movingly to contemporary readers about the nature of love than André Aciman’s haunting Call Me by Your Name. First published in 2007, it was hailed as “a love letter, an invocation . . . an exceptionally beautiful book” (Stacey D’Erasmo, The New York Times Book Review). Nearly three quarters of a million copies have been sold, and the book became a much-loved, Academy Award–winning film starring Timothée Chalamet as the young Elio and Armie Hammer as Oliver, the graduate student with whom he falls in love.
In Find Me, Aciman shows us Elio’s father, Samuel, on a trip from Florence to Rome to visit Elio, who has become a gifted classical pianist. A chance encounter on the train with a beautiful young woman upends Sami’s plans and changes his life forever.
Elio soon moves to Paris, where he, too, has a consequential affair, while Oliver, now a New England college professor with a family, suddenly finds himself contemplating a return trip across the Atlantic.
Aciman is a master of sensibility, of the intimate details and the emotional nuances that are the substance of passion. Find Me brings us back inside the magic circle of one of our greatest contemporary romances to ask if, in fact, true love ever dies.
Reviews and What Readers Say
“[Find Me] is touching without being sentimental . . . An elegant, memorable story of enduring love across the generations."
—Kirkus Reviews
“ The focus of Find Me is the unlived life, the real life that comes to a standstill . . . Aciman's clever arrangement takes advantage of the frustrated desire of the reader to see Elio and Oliver reunited . . . Far more ambitious than Call Me by Your Name . . . great care has gone into the artistic shaping of this narrative.”
—Anne Serre, The Times Literary Supplement
“A structural marvel . . . proves itself indispensable to longtime readers and newcomers alike.”
—Garrett Biggs, The Chicago Review of Books
“Aciman had his work cut out for himself in crafting a sequel as contemplative and gorgeous as Call Me by Your Name, which ended in its own coda of Elio's and Oliver's paths crossing years and years hence. Threading that needle perfectly, Aciman continues his story, parsing its very structure in his erudite, knowing style . . . Aciman's genius holds true and makes Find Me a splendid work in its own right.”
—Dave Wheeler, Shelf Awareness
Find Me: A Novel by André Aciman
272 pages
ISBN 978-0374155018