Holiday Sale! Get an annual membership for 20% off!

Summary and Reviews of Find Me by Andre Aciman

Find Me by Andre Aciman

Find Me

by Andre Aciman
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus:
  • First Published:
  • Oct 29, 2019, 272 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Aug 2020, 272 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Book Summary

In this spellbinding exploration of the varieties of love, the author of the worldwide bestseller Call Me by Your Name revisits its complex and beguiling characters decades after their first meeting.

No novel in recent memory has spoken more movingly to contemporary readers about the nature of love than André Aciman's haunting Call Me by Your Name. First published in 2007, it was hailed as "a love letter, an invocation...an exceptionally beautiful book" (Stacey D'Erasmo, The New York Times Book Review). Nearly three quarters of a million copies have been sold, and the book became a much-loved, Academy Award–winning film starring Timothée Chalamet as the young Elio and Armie Hammer as Oliver, the graduate student with whom he falls in love.

In Find Me, Aciman shows us Elio's father, Samuel, on a trip from Florence to Rome to visit Elio, who has become a gifted classical pianist. A chance encounter on the train with a beautiful young woman upends Sami's plans and changes his life forever.

Elio soon moves to Paris, where he, too, has a consequential affair, while Oliver, now a New England college professor with a family, suddenly finds himself contemplating a return trip across the Atlantic.

Aciman is a master of sensibility, of the intimate details and the emotional nuances that are the substance of passion. Find Me brings us back inside the magic circle of one of our greatest contemporary romances to ask if, in fact, true love ever dies.

Sadly, the publisher was unable to provide us with an excerpt from this book.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
  1. The book begins with a conversation between Miranda and Samuel, who are strangers. What is your first impression of them? What are the similarities and differences in attitudes, beliefs, and experiences that draw them to each other? What are the critical moments in the development of their relationship? Why might Aciman have chosen this opening, given that the story ultimately belongs to Elio and Oliver?
  2. Who is the "Me" of the book's title? Might there be more than one? What does it mean to be found? How are the themes of love, loss, and loneliness explored in each section?
  3. Miranda's father is editing a dissertation that contains parables, which he says prove that "life and time are not in sync" and that we all "have many lives." ...
Please be aware that this discussion may contain spoilers!


Here are some of the comments posted about Find Me in our legacy forum.
You can see the full discussion here.


Do you agree with Samuel's observations on love?
I question myself just how much I believe in Samuel's observations. I am a loner and it takes a special type person to be in love with or love me. I may have more of his thoughts than even I like to admit. - taking.mytime

Do you believe Oliver's expectations of his relationship with his wife were naïve? Do you think it's possible for a relationship to grow over time the way Oliver expect his to mature?
I don't think that Oliver was naive about his relationship with his wife. He expected the things that all married couples wish for. However being bi-sexual one sex was bound to win out. It might have taken years, but some of that time may well have ... - taking.mytime

How are the different stages of life depicted? How does a character's age influence his or her beliefs about life, love and death? How has your age influenced your beliefs over time?
youth - MIranda; middle age Elio and Oliver; old age Samuel and Michele My core beliefs have remained pretty steady over my lifetime. However my patience has finally gotten much better, making my beliefs a bit more mellow and steady. - taking.mytime

How do you believe the past and present intertwine throughout the novel, and what are the consequences? By the end of the book, have the lives of the deceased been extended into the present, and if so, how?
The characters mentioned their lost ones, thereby extending the loves of those deceased. - taking.mytime

How do you think Elio's experience of first love as a boy shape the man he has become? What do you believe Oliver's infatuation with Erica and Paul says about him?
Since I hadn't read the prequel to this novel, I really did feel like their story was revealed gradually... finding out that Oliver was Elios first, and really, only love until he meets Michel. Then that Oliver left him for a woman and ended up ... - beckys

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

Can the euphoria of first love ever be recreated? Is it worth sacrificing something sturdy to chase after something fleeting? Was what Elio and Oliver had in Call Me By Your Name any less real simply because it was so brief? Find Me is perhaps more contemplative than its predecessor, but ultimately no less enchanting, and arguably even more affecting. The unhappiness, emotional distance, and unspent desire that these characters must first grapple with in order to attain closure makes the conclusion all the more gratifying...continued

Full Review Members Only (621 words)

(Reviewed by Rachel Hullett).

Media Reviews

BuzzFeed
You don't have to have read Call Me by Your Name...to immediately fall in love with this sexy, melancholic follow-up. It stands entirely separate, yet connected, a beautiful ode to the passage of time, to the lasting power of true love and the ache of loneliness.

Good Housekeeping
With all of the richly painted details, emotional nuance, and deeply affecting romance as the first installment, this book will draw you in and make you believe in love again.

New York Times
Find Me is a lyrical meditation on being forced to move to another location after the party’s over, on the Sisyphean task of trying to replicate the magic of young passion...It may not make for the stuff of glistening cinema, but it strikes an affectingly melancholy chord.

USA Today
Find Me has every bit of romantic tension as Call Me by Your Name, but is even more frustrating because all you want is to have Elio and Oliver at least in the same room together (and you don't get that until the final section). In that sense, the book achieves what it’s set out to do: Make you wait 20 years before "finding" that person you’re supposed to be with after all.

The New Yorker
The relationships in Aciman’s novel, be they transient or lasting, are marked by an affinity that tends to deepen through conversation, though it requires no words. It is all the more ironic, then, that this reviewer’s experience of Find Me was one of such profound disattunement. The book wants to be intimate, profound, but it reads as glib and remote, impervious to actual feeling. Indeed, the text seems not to account for an audience. An apter title would be “Get Lost.”

The Observer (UK)
Find Me is a sensual delight . . . Throughout his nonfiction and fiction, Aciman has maintained a profound preoccupation with memory and the responsibility of history. An aching sense of vulnerability and fearlessness drives this book past any question of whether or not a sequel was warranted.

Elle (UK)
The sequel is just as maddeningly seductive as the original.

Booklist (starred review)
Call Me By Your Name was widely praised for its treatment of the nature of love, a theme that Find Me continues with subtlety and grace. Its treatment of the characters' psychology is astute and insightful, but what will ultimately drive reader interest is the question of whether star-crossed lovers Elio and Oliver will reunite. One can only hope.

Library Journal (starred review)
Aciman gifts readers with a beautiful 21st-century romance that reflects on the remembrance of things past and the courage to embrace the future.

Kirkus Reviews
An elegant, memorable story of enduring love across the generations.

Publishers Weekly
Elegant...Elio is the heart of the novel, as its core themes?including fatherhood, music, the nature of time and fate, the weight and promise of the past?are infused with eroticism, nostalgia and tenderness in fluid prose. The novel again demonstrates Aciman's capacity to fuse the sensual and the cerebral in stories that touch the heart.

Reader Reviews

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Beyond the Book



Literary Sequels

2019 has been a year of literary sequels: bestselling authors expanding on fictional worlds they created, in some cases decades after the original book was published. Find Me by André Aciman is one such example, published 12 years after Call Me By Your Name. But it's hardly a new phenomenon—here are some of the most noteworthy literary sequels to have hit the shelves, often to the surprise and delight of readers everywhere.

Cover of <i>The Testaments</i> by Margaret AtwoodThe Testaments by Margaret Atwood (2019)
Sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, 34 years between books

Due to her growing frustrations with the current social climate and a desire to depict the fall of ...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Find Me, try these:

  • Love in the Big City jacket

    Love in the Big City

    by Sang Young Park

    Published 2022

    About this book

    A funny, transporting, surprising, and poignant novel that was one of the highest-selling debuts of recent years in Korea, Love in the Big City tells the story of a young gay man searching for happiness in the lonely city of Seoul.

  • Ellie and the Harpmaker jacket

    Ellie and the Harpmaker

    by Hazel Prior

    Published 2020

    About this book

    A rich, heartwarming and charming debut novel that reminds us that sometimes you find love in the most unexpected places.

We have 4 read-alikes for Find Me, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
More books by Andre Aciman
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket
    The Frozen River
    by Ariel Lawhon
    "I cannot say why it is so important that I make this daily record. Perhaps because I have been ...
  • Book Jacket: Everything We Never Had
    Everything We Never Had
    by Randy Ribay
    Francisco Maghabol has recently arrived in California from the Philippines, eager to earn money to ...
  • Book Jacket: The Demon of Unrest
    The Demon of Unrest
    by Erik Larson
    In the aftermath of the 1860 presidential election, the divided United States began to collapse as ...
  • Book Jacket: Daughters of Shandong
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Daughters of Shandong is the debut novel of Eve J. Chung, a human rights lawyer living in New York. ...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
The Berry Pickers
by Amanda Peters
A four-year-old Mi'kmaq girl disappears, leaving a mystery unsolved for fifty years.
Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
Who Said...

A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now