First published by Vogue on 21 October 2019
Twelve years after Call Me By Your Name – André Aciman’s novel about an intense summer romance between a teenager and an older student – a sequel has arrived. Find Me (out 29 October) follows the story of Oliver over the two decades after he returned to the US leaving Elio in Italy, and reveals what life has dealt the two men in adulthood.
It also gives us, for the first time, a glimpse inside the head of Elio’s father, Sami; the opening third of the book is written from his perspective as he finds new love late in life. “He’s never been called Sami except in the movie,” Aciman confesses with a chuckle. “But that’s OK – I stole that from the film.”
The film to which he’s referring, of course, is Luca Guadagnino’s acclaimed adaptation of Call Me By Your Name, the indie hit of 2017 starring Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer. A decade after the book’s publication, it brought the tale to a new audience and fleshed out the sun-baked setting of 1980s Italy. Aciman is its biggest fan: “I think I’m the only author who loved the movie of his book,” he says.
Both the novel and the film left many desperate to see the lovers reunited, and Find Me takes up that challenge via a broader exploration of love, vulnerability and memory. From his New York home, Aciman speaks to Vogue about revisiting Elio and Oliver, the impact of the movie and why homophobia never encroaches on his iconic gay love story.
Why did you decide to write a sequel?
“The characters never leave you. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve attempted to take them up and go on with their lives. I always started with Elio as the main character, which I realised, subsequently, was a big mistake. Then, just by pure happenstance, I began writing about the father, and then I knew Elio was going to show up from the wings — and I knew I had a book. It was just a question of picking different dates at which they’d be telling their stories, and we have 10 years later, 15 years later and 20 years later, exactly within the space that was opened up by Call Me By Your Name.”
In that book you tackled first love; in Find Me, you look at love later in life, both for the father, who falls for a younger woman, and in the character of Michel, an older man whom Elio becomes involved with in his thirties.
“Yes, both of the older men are going for younger people. I love that. I love the mix of young, old, old, young; the fact that one provides the kind of energy that the other probably lacks, and the older person provides the stability, the gentleness and the wisdom that comes with age. I find that more interesting than having this kind of sublime parity between people: she is 45, he is 45.”
What was it like revisiting Elio and Oliver? How has the dynamic between them evolved between the two books?
“They are clearly more mature now and know how fragile life can be. They have both had other relationships, they know that they have to be careful and that a separation, should it occur again, would be devastating. Find Me gave me a sense of closure and finality. Of course, life is full of surprises and no road is without bumps or wrong turns. But I think this ends the tale of Elio and Oliver.”
When you first saw Luca Guadagnino’s film, was it what you’d pictured?
“Yes and no. I was worried about the ending because I had been told it was going to be a shot of Elio’s face crying, and I said ‘Oh my god, this is going to be sentimental.’ Of course it wasn’t. He was learning this wonderful lesson, which was how do you accept pain and how do you resign yourself to the end of the relationship? I thought that was so beautifully done. I told the director, ‘Your end of the film is better than the end of my book.’”
There’s the famous scene involving a peach. Some people were disappointed that Armie Hammer doesn’t eat the peach, whereas in your book Oliver does. Did it bother you?
“No. When I wrote the scene, I was enjoying myself. But when you write it, it’s one thing. I thought eating the peach would be too strong on screen. I loved the way it was done. I didn’t need to see him eat the peach, I didn’t need to see raw sex — it’s fine, it’s just fine.”
What was the response to the movie like for you?
“The power of the cinema is unchartable. In the States, almost a million people have bought the book, which would never have happened without the film. The book had always been in print, but not this way; this changed everything. Suddenly I became a New York Times bestselling author — the last thing I ever imagined being! I knew they were going to make a film eight years before they did, but I had no idea that it was going to become this worldwide phenomenon that everybody has seen. The movie stirred very powerful nerves.
Would you like Find Me to be made into a film?
“Yes, I would love it! I would even be happy to participate in writing the screenplay. As soon as the [first] movie came out, everybody was talking about a sequel — but I don’t know that it’s being talked about now. They’re all extremely busy.”
Gay relationships have often been written as tragedies. Many LGBTQ+ people loved how uplifting Call Me By Your Name was. Was that intentional?
“I was writing about the attraction of one person to another person, and the ultimate consummation of that attraction. I was not interested in bullying or mockery or violence or AIDS. I eliminated all these almost predictable villains in every gay story. I wanted Romeo and Juliet without the Capulets and the Montagues, to put it crassly, and I hovered over the romance because that’s what interested me and stirred me to write the book. I was not going to write a book about somebody who gets beaten to death or whatever — that was not at all my agenda.”
Even in the 1980s, your characters don’t face any homophobia.
“No! I didn’t want it. People know they’re gay and nobody thinks twice about it, which is how it should be – and I have to say, in the world I live in, this is how it is.”
André Aciman’s Find Me is published by Faber & Faber and will be released on 29 October 2019.