The realness of this book was
what struck me most about it. I could so easily see Elio as a real seventeen-year-old
boy with all of the emotion and lust and confusion that comes with that. It
also meant that when he did things that I didn’t particularly like, or agree
with, I wasn’t as upset or as disappointed as I would have been if he had been
portrayed as a falsely understanding or knowledgeable character.
Another point of realness is that
this book is not a fantasy love story. A lot of such stories have obstacles
that keep the characters apart, which this book does have, but then they shift
to the characters being together forever and dealing with all the problems that
face their relationship together. This book doesn’t have that element; Elio and
Oliver are together for two weeks and they end and it’s heart-breaking, but it’s
also real. You don’t end up with everyone that you fall in love with and you’re
denied time together with such people, but that’s life. An important message
that this novel puts across is that someone can be very definitive in your life
and play a huge role in shaping your future, but that doesn’t mean that they’ll
be a part of your future.
This book is Elio looking back at
the time that he and Oliver were together, and the novel reads really well as
that. In our memories, some things stick out more than most and usually I would
be annoyed with a lack of certain descriptions, which could have easily added
another hundred or so pages to this book, but in this case, I wasn’t because
that’s not what this book is.
This book managed to make me
happy, sad, disgusted, angry and most other emotions in between. Still, a week
after I finished it, I find myself continuing to go back and reading the final
few paragraphs again; that’s the impact it has.
