Earlier this year I found my YouTube feed filled with songs of a peculiar sounding movie titled "Call me by your name". Wondering why on earth I'd ever do that, I gave the song a try.
It would take me just half a minute to realize that this song, this particular song, I would cherish as a favorite forever.
And hence began the fangirling.
I watched all the trailers. I read the Wikipedia article. I watched interviews of the author. I stalked Armie Hammer on Instagram. I told everyone I met about the book, the movie and especially, the songs.
And of course, I listened to "Mystery of love" on repeat till my ears throbbed in pain and my head was filled with confabulations of warm sunny days and sepia-tinted skies.
My imagination of the summers of northern Italy was prefaced by the opening scenes of the movie, the characters complementing the green of the orchard, basking in the white light of the yellow sun, in their billowy pastel colored clothes. It reminded me of my own sunlit summers, of diving into sparkly blue water, of ice-cream and television, of books read in a comfortably awkward position.
And I brought this effect of sweet melancholy that the film had had on me to reading the vividly descriptive words that Andre Acimen had meticulously placed in his book.
The phrase "summer fling" engrained in my mind, I began the read. The book lifts your heart with the laughable intricacies of infatuation bordering on obsession and fills your mind with those much-awaited private discussions.
As you progress, the confusion of he likes me, he likes me not is sweetened by the quiet happiness of the character in being surrounded by people he loves in a place of comfort. He wishes for this to last an eternity and as the reader, you do too. You are transported to the villa itself, to the days spent reading under the trees, to apricot juice and discussions of music and history. You wish to take part in their dinner drudgeries and you find yourself beginning to believe that with just a turn, you'd see the blue sea.
What happens later, what happens to the characters, their lives and their feelings is overall, inconsequential. It's more about the effect it has on you, the reader. The slight smiles of effervescent love, the blooming happiness that a single word can bring, the days spent thinking of what could have been--unraveling the mystery of love, inviting you to narrate your story to yourself as you read.
Even though the age gap and the fact that Eliot is underage isn't something I particularly cared for, the feel of the book wasn't too cringe-worthy.
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ReplyDeleteI agree. It was a nice book.
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