How is Elio? How is Oliver? Where are they? These are probably the questions all readers of Find Me are trying anxiously to locate in the book. I was no exception. The story of Elio and Oliver in Call Me By Your Name engraved in our mind so deeply that when the sequel came out, we can’t wait to see them in person again.
Likely, Aciman knows so well of this mentality of the reader that he plays a little game with us. We won’t see the two main characters until we get through half of the book. The intensity of anticipation of seeing Elio or Oliver again was high that I felt dizzy by the time I hear Elio speaks for the first time. I let go of a soft sigh and felt satisfied.
The anticipation that the readers experience in Find Me is intelligently fabricated by Aciman to coincide with the experience of Elio and Oliver’s longing for each other. The book is set 15 years after the summer in Call Me By Your Name. Elio appears for the first time in the book and recounts to his father a wall in Rome in which he says “I look at this wall…I am back with him…what is watermarked in this very wall overshadows everyone I’ve know…if I stood for a hour staring at this wall, I’d be with him for an hour. If I spoke this wall, it would speak back.” Elio would tell the wall, “look for me, find me,” while the wall would ask him back the same. Oliver, at the other side of the globe in the middle of a party, hear Elio says “find me, Oliver, fine me.” They talk to each other all these years without the need to actually contacting each other. Eventually, the calling has come to the point that they finally see each other again.
This anticipation, the finding of Elio or Oliver was the technique Andre so intelligently used for the reader to experience Elio/Oliver’s feeling toward each other, that the feeling was so intense that I felt like I lived through their experience.