And not even because I’m not attractive or seductive. It’s simply because he’s lost to boys. He’s not for us, for those like me. It’s the girls who will win him. It’s torsos that join together and then withdraw in a hurry to remove clothing, the Nordic sweater, the T-shirt, so that finally it’s skin next to skin. His torso is muscular and hairless, with nipples that are flat and dark. My chest is skinny, not yet deformed as it will be four years later by the blows of an emergency room doctor. All the same, I wondered if this could be a complete invention. As you already know, I invented stories all the time, with so much authenticity that people usually ended up believing me sometimes even I was no longer able to disentangle the true from the false). Could I have made this story up from scratch? Could I have turned an erotic obsession into a passion? Yes, it's possible.”

Including both native and non-native speakers, French is the fifth most-spoken language in the world. It’s a Romance language , meaning it’s a descendant of Vulgar Latin, and it’s spoken in places all over the world. Much of its global dominance is a legacy of France’s colonization of Africa and other parts of the world, and today, there are far more speakers of French outside of France than in it. Current French President Emmanuel Macron hopes to continue the spread of the language, though his current plans to promote French in Africa have been criticized for furthering a colonialist mission. I will discover that these books speak to me, and speak for me (and will become aware of the power of literary minimalism, the neutral voice that’s closer to reality). Six months later, Guibert will announce he’s dying of AIDS. I’ll wonder then if The Wounded Man was a premonition or if, on the contrary, it showed the last glimmer of free love—a love shown without constraint or morality or fear—before the great massacre. He tells me about his little sisters, Nathalie and Sandrine. Sixteen and eleven years old respectively. Not only that, all the girls are in his orbit. They circle him, constantly seeking his attention. Even those who feign indifference do so only to win his favor.

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Even now I remain fascinated by this sentence. Understand, it isn’t the premonition that fascinates me, nor even the fact that it has been realized. It’s also not the maturity or poignancy implied. It’s not the arrangement of the words, even if I’m aware that I probably wouldn’t have been able to come up with those exact ones myself. It’s the violence that the words carry within them, their admission of inferiority and, at the same time, of love. It’s at the end of the town. I’m surprised by the choice of the place, since it’s not at all central, or easily accessible. I think: He must like places away from the crowd. I do not yet understand that he obviously chose it to be out of sight. I am in this state of innocence, this stupidity. If I were used to exercising caution, or had developed the art of not responding to questions—but I barely know anything yet of concealment, of the clandestine.

I discover the pain of waiting, because there is this refusal to admit defeat, to believe that a future where it happens again is possible. I try to convince myself that he’ll make some kind of sign in my direction. The memory of our tangled bodies will overcome his resistance, it has to. As he told me himself, it’s a question of necessity. You can’t fight necessity. If you do, necessity will win. He doesn’t notice my excitement when he comes in, or any of the efforts I’ve made either. It’s only the house that interests him; he walks around it as though it’s a minefield. He mentions nothing of the size or the light or the décor, he says simply that there are a lot of books, that he has never seen so many books. Not wanting to linger he asks to see my room. We have to go up two flights of stairs. But that being the case, most of the time, he seems to keep the girls at a distance, choosing the company of his guy friends. His preference for friendship, or at least the camaraderie that comes with it, seems to outweigh any other consideration. And I’m surprised, precisely because he could easily use his beauty as a weapon; he is at the age of conquests, when one often impresses others by multiplying those conquests. However his reticence does nothing to feed a secret hope in me. It just makes him even more appealing because I admire those who don’t use what they have at their disposal. But in that split second I somehow instinctively know that I must rise to the occasion, that he would not bear to see me stammering or in a daze, otherwise everything will crumble to the ground. What did you think of the way the author played with truth and fiction? Does the book change if you know that it’s a memoir rather than a novel?Kelly, Hillary (1 May 2019). "This Year's Call Me by Your Name Is French: More Meta But Just As Hot". Vulture. Archived from the original on 24 June 2021 . Retrieved 21 June 2021. The Andrieu surname is an enigma. It could be the name of a general, of a man of the cloth, of a farmer. All the same, it strikes me as an everyman’s name without my knowing enough to justify that thought. I think I love him for this loneliness, that it’s what pushed me toward him. I love his aloofness, his disengagement with the outside world. Such singularity moves me. And as for the rare seconds scraped together on the playground, or in the hallway, when we’re finally in the same place: total indifference. Worse than coldness. An attentive observer might even discern a certain hostility, a determination to keep his distance. We took refuge in my parents’ camper, which was parked in our garage for the winter at the end of the season. (At the beginning of spring it will be found in the Saint-Georges-de-Didonne campground, where we spend weekends walking on the beach, buying churros at the waterfront and fresh shrimp at the market that will end up in bowls later when it’s time for drinks before dinner.)

I might as well be straight with you. You’re not going to like the main character in this book, Paul Morris. In fact you’re probably going to loathe him, when you’re not consumed with contempt for his lying, manipulative, misogynist ways. You won’t have much time for the bunch of people he sponges off, either; in fact The Catcher in the Rye’s Holden Caulfield would have summed the lot of them up in three words. ‘Big, fat phonies.’ I watch him doze and then his face rolls over to the left, instantly waking him up. He puts the headphones from his Walkman on my ears. He wants me to listen to Bruce Springsteen.My father insisted on good grades. I simply didn’t have the right to be mediocre or even average. There was only one place for me—first. He claimed that I would find salvation in my studies, that only study could “allow one to enter the elevator.” He wanted the top-ranking higher education establishments for me, nothing else. I obeyed, just as I had with my glasses. I had to.

At seventeen, I don’t have a clear awareness of the situation. At seventeen, I don’t dream of a modern life somewhere out there, in the stars, I just take what’s given to me. I don’t nurse any ambition, nor do I carry around any resentment. I’m not even particularly bored. Arrête avec tes mensonges" (in French). Angoulême Francophone Film Festival . Retrieved 3 April 2023. Thomas undresses, leaving his clothes around the room. He wants to be naked himself so that our skin touches (he has no problem with nudity and teaches me to be less afraid of mine). He caresses me with hands that know exactly what to do. He bites my hips, my torso. He groans, no longer able to contain it, a sound that he releases maybe without even realizing it himself; he moves me tremendously. As I’ve said, nothing in life moves me more than these moments of pure abandon, of self-oblivion.So here they are, in Jake’s home country, with his mother next door (in Antipodean terms) and awaiting the arrival of a new nanny so that Anna can start the new job that Jake’s friend has kindly arranged for her. I remember the movement of his hips pressing against the pinball machine. This one sentence had me in its grip until the end. Two young men find each other, always fearing that life itself might be the villain standing in their way. A stunning and heart-gripping tale.” —André Aciman, author of Call Me by Your Name Molly Ringwald translated this French Call Me By Your Name-esque novel about two teenagers in 1984 Bordeaux as they fall in love in the shadows, leaving one of them to reflect on the relationship many years later OprahMag.com, 30 of the Best LGBTQ Books in 2019 I doubt that my lover will come to me, since he’s the one who insisted on this wall of silence. The other students would surely not fail to notice if he by chance greeted me, if he happened to say hello, even casually. Because, as I said, we ran in very different circles, a crossing, even an accidental, furtive one, was inconceivable. It was clear to me that it was out of the question to take even the slightest risk. I should be able to stay in this state of ecstasy. Or astonishment. Or let myself be overwhelmed by the incomprehensibility of it all. But the feeling that prevails the moment he disappears is that of being abandoned. Perhaps because it is already a familiar feeling.