-
Access our Top 20
Books of 2024!
Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Discuss | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
Book Reviewed by: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.
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.
Sadly, the publisher was unable to provide us with an excerpt from this book.
Here are some of the comments posted about Find Me in our legacy forum.
You can see the full discussion here.
Do you agree with Samuel's observations on love?
I question myself just how much I believe in Samuel's observations. I am a loner and it takes a special type person to be in love with or love me. I may have more of his thoughts than even I like to admit. - taking.mytime
Do you believe Oliver's expectations of his relationship with his wife were naïve? Do you think it's possible for a relationship to grow over time the way Oliver expect his to mature?
I don't think that Oliver was naive about his relationship with his wife. He expected the things that all married couples wish for. However being bi-sexual one sex was bound to win out. It might have taken years, but some of that time may well have ... - taking.mytime
How are the different stages of life depicted? How does a character's age influence his or her beliefs about life, love and death? How has your age influenced your beliefs over time?
youth - MIranda;
middle age Elio and Oliver;
old age Samuel and Michele
My core beliefs have remained pretty steady over my lifetime. However my patience has finally gotten much better, making my beliefs a bit more mellow and steady. - taking.mytime
How do you believe the past and present intertwine throughout the novel, and what are the consequences? By the end of the book, have the lives of the deceased been extended into the present, and if so, how?
The characters mentioned their lost ones, thereby extending the loves of those deceased. - taking.mytime
How do you think Elio's experience of first love as a boy shape the man he has become? What do you believe Oliver's infatuation with Erica and Paul says about him?
Since I hadn't read the prequel to this novel, I really did feel like their story was revealed gradually... finding out that Oliver was Elios first, and really, only love until he meets Michel. Then that Oliver left him for a woman and ended up ... - beckys
Can the euphoria of first love ever be recreated? Is it worth sacrificing something sturdy to chase after something fleeting? Was what Elio and Oliver had in Call Me By Your Name any less real simply because it was so brief? Find Me is perhaps more contemplative than its predecessor, but ultimately no less enchanting, and arguably even more affecting. The unhappiness, emotional distance, and unspent desire that these characters must first grapple with in order to attain closure makes the conclusion all the more gratifying...continued
Full Review
(621 words)
This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access,
become a member today.
(Reviewed by Rachel Hullett).
2019 has been a year of literary sequels: bestselling authors expanding on fictional worlds they created, in some cases decades after the original book was published. Find Me by André Aciman is one such example, published 12 years after Call Me By Your Name. But it's hardly a new phenomenon—here are some of the most noteworthy literary sequels to have hit the shelves, often to the surprise and delight of readers everywhere.
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood (2019)
Sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, 34 years between books
Due to her growing frustrations with the current social climate and a desire to depict the fall of ...
This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.
If you liked Find Me, try these:
by Sang Young Park
Published 2022
A funny, transporting, surprising, and poignant novel that was one of the highest-selling debuts of recent years in Korea, Love in the Big City tells the story of a young gay man searching for happiness in the lonely city of Seoul.
by Hazel Prior
Published 2020
A rich, heartwarming and charming debut novel that reminds us that sometimes you find love in the most unexpected places.
.png)
In youth we run into difficulties. In old age difficulties run into us
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
