![]() ![]() ‘If there is a flame, don’t snuff it out, don’t be brutal with it … We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty.’ His advice, though generous, is also an admission of inexperience. In a solemn postmortem of that summer of love, Samuel reveals to his son that he’s known about the relationship for some time, and even felt some second-hand pride at its youthful honesty. After a tempestuous but secretive love affair, capped off by a quasi-elopement to Rome, Oliver must return to his teaching job in New York, leaving Elio heartbroken. Elio Perlman, the seventeen-year-old protagonist, has just bid a tearful farewell to Oliver, the young academic who has spent the summer at the Perlmans’ estate on the Italian Riviera working as an assistant to Samuel, Elio’s father. One of the most moving passages in André Aciman’s 2007 novel Call Me by Your Name is a heart-to-heart between father and son at a moment when seemingly all is said and done. ![]()
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