To fall in love is lose oneself.

It is to disregard the ego and to focus all of one’s energy on someone else.

The intense emotion of passion makes everyone else fade away. The ego becomes weakened, and as the romantic relationship deepens, two become one.

This process is what the name of this novel refers to; the merging of two souls and two bodies into one experience. 

Elio’s family spends their summers in the countryside. In the small Italian village, there is little to do save reading, playing the piano, playing tennis and going swimming. His father, a professor of philosophy, allows promising PhD candidates to stay with them, working for a few hours each week as his personal secretary but otherwise having time to edit their dissertation manuscripts.

These aspiring academics become extras in the lives of the large family, and often, they will remain in the outskirts of the social circles for many years to come. 

One summer, they are visited by 25-year-old Oliver, with whom Elio quickly becomes infatuated. With all the lusts that teenage years can muster, he fixates on Oliver, and before long they have become secret lovers, hiding the affair from the others in the house.

The description of their physical relationship is graphic, as it outlines the blurring of the lines between the bodies. The two men long for each other to such an extent that they examine, taste, touch and smell one another, driven in equal amount by lust and love. 

Summer is not forever. Sooner or later, it will fade into autumn and when this happens, Oliver will need to return to the States to defend his PhD dissertation, and Elio will go on with his life in Italy. Knowing that the relationship by necessity is a summer fling, the emotions become even more passionate, culminating in one last weekend, spent together in Rome.

The fact that nothing can ever come of the relationship, that it will be over almost before it starts, is also what makes it powerful enough to resonate within and between them for many years to come. 

André Aciman is a scholar of literature, specialized in the writings of Marcel Proust. Proust’s fascination with the passing of time, and of time lost, is mirrored in this novel (not to be confused with the film with the same name, based on the book but entirely different).

The passing of time is reflected in how people come and go in one another’s lives, more often as temporary guests than as permanent inhabitants.