Stories of youthful love affairs inevitably involve complications of the heart, and when authors mix together coming-of-age tales with coming-out stories, the characters often move through emotional peaks and valleys, from acute fear, doubt and anxiety to hopeful lust and deep desire.
In André Aciman’s 2007 novel Call Me by Your Name, these intense emotional pendulum swings are beautifully captured through the eyes of two young men as they struggle to understand themselves and the strange uncertainties of youth. For shy 17-year-old Elio, it has become an annual tradition for his academic parents to take on a house guest/doctoral student during their summers on the Italian Riviera, something the boy has come to dread since it forces him to temporarily move out of his bedroom. But in 1983, a young American doctoral student (seven year’s Elio’s senior) moves in for six weeks, and the duo soon begin a tumultuous love affair.
Call Me by Your Name is a meticulously crafted novel, told almost entirely in a stream-of-consciousness from teenage Elio’s point of view. This dramatic and ultimately tragic romance was brought to the silver screen last year in a film adaptation that had its world premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and is scheduled for digital download at the end of this month.
Aciman will discuss his novel and its screen production at Boswell Book Company at 7 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 19. He currently serves as a distinguished professor at the Graduate Center of City University of New York, where he teaches history and literary theory. His 1995 memoir, Out of Egypt, won a Whiting Award.
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Book Happening
Finding Home in the ‘70s
Jim Landwehr writes descriptively and has a good story to tell. In his memoir, The Portland House, he recounts growing up as the middle child among six siblings in a single-parent family. The setting, an urban neighborhood in St. Paul, MN, during the 1970s, will remind local readers of many details shared with Milwaukee—down to the blight of Dutch Elm disease. Landwehr’s story has significance beyond mere autobiography in showing the value of family—a sense of home—in shaping who we are. Although he’s been living in Wisconsin since the ‘80s, you can tell he’s a Minnesotaan at heart when he refers to soda as “pop.” (David Luhrssen)
Landwehr will discuss The Portland House from 2:30-4:30 p.m., Feb. 17, at Café De Arts, 830 W. St. Paul Ave., Waukesha.
