Find Me

A Novel

By: André Aciman

Narrated by: Michael Stuhlbarg

Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's Summary

2019 Vogue Magazine Best Books of the Year
2019 Amazon.com Best Books of the Year

"[Narrator Michael Stuhlbarg's] elegant performance and Aciman's sensitive writing keep things touching without ever being sentimental. Wonderful listening." (AudioFile magazine, Earphones Award winner)

This program is read by Michael Stuhlbarg, the actor who played Professor Samuel Perlman in Luca Guadagnino's critically acclaimed film Call Me by Your Name.

A bonus conversation between Michael Stuhlbarg and André Aciman is included at the end of the program.

In this spellbinding exploration of the varieties of love, the author of the worldwide best seller 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 listeners 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.

©2019 André Aciman (P)2019 Macmillan Audio

Critic Reviews

"Narrator Michael Stuhlbarg's rough, raspy voice lends a whispery intimacy to this sequel to Call Me by Your Name...." (AudioFile Earphone Award)

Was hoping for more

Ok, like so many I was ready for a further continuation of Call Me By Your Name. Alas, this really isn’t it. The portion of the 200 plus page book devoted to Elio and Oliver is a mere 11 pages, that’s it. Granted I was satisfied with were we left them at this end of this book, but there was so much more than we got, that needed to be delved into. But based on the words of Mr. Aciman, this is it for our heros.
The first two thirds of the book is about Mr Perlman and a much younger he meets on the train. Mr Aciman has relayed how this sort of encounter happened to him and this is more a less of allowing himself to see how it might have played out. If he wanted to do a book about this, he should have just left Elio and Oliver our of it. We learn a bit more about Elio and Oliver’s life apart from one another in the next 2 sections before the final 11 pages.
Michael Stuhlbarg’s reading was nice but it felt odd hearing him reading the thoughts of Elio and Oliver.
I’m glad there was a happy ending of sorts but I’m now left wanting more.

Lost Me

I am agreed with many of the other current reviews that Find Me is not a sequel to CMBYN. Although it was excellently written and narrated, for me the story line left a lot to be desired. Too many chapters were about Samuel and his new love affair with the women he met on the train. After that I had a hard time following the story and understanding who was who. In the first novel the story is written from the perspective of Elio and there is a strong connection to the story and all his emotions, and the story is easy to follow. With reading Find Me, I was often lost and confused. Had the sequel been written in the same context, from Elio's perspective, I think it would have been a much more successful sequel. I did enjoy Acman's beautiful descriptions of the settings in Rome and Paris and choice of vocabulary describing human emotion. My first review of any title on here by the way; but I felt I needed to do it.

Not what you are hoping for

I understand sequels are a massive challenge. There are such high expectations to live up to. And maybe because of this the author was afraid to dive into the story line that so many people were wanting and decided to dance around the plot that was expected. So this was a let down.

Also the fact that every main character we know from the original becomes suddenly madly, sexually attracted to some random person they meet was very unsatisfying.

Overall I think he should have used each story line of each romance in separate unrelated books. They aren’t bad. Just not what anyone was wanting.

I would have given a negative two if I could

Coming on the heels of CMBYN and billed as its sequel, this was the greatest letdown ever. I do not know what came over Aciman that he had the temerity to publish this book. It read like poorly written soft porn that almost seemed to venture on the edge of sleazy/unacceptable.
One expected the psychological drama of CMBYN played out further but instead we were treated to a (dirty) old man's lust for a woman young enough to be his daughter followed by a (another) old man's lust for a younger man and then the books meandered off into the realms of cheesy nonsense in the last two chapters.
For legions of CMBYN fans who waited for this book with bated breath to find out the fate of Oliver and Elio going forward from the Ghost Spots chapter of CMBYN, this book was nothing short of traumatic. It left one feeling unclean somehow.
CMBYN has been accused by some to be overly verbose and to an extent it was, but it was verbosity one could relate with. It brought out all the doubts and pangs of growing up, that each one of us had faced, but not so in this piece of trash. My wife who has neither read nor watched CMBYN and accidentally heard an excerpt of the Find Me audio-book in the car, wanted to know "why I was listening to porn in the car"!!!
I can fully understand now why Armie Hammer said that there would be no movie sequel after reading the book after seeming to have been sold on the idea. I shudder to think if a movie does come out that remains faithful to the book. Luca Guadagnino had better take note and take liberties with the screen play if he really decides to take up the project.

Even Michael Stuhlbarg who did such a memorable job in delivering Sammy Perlman's unforgettable lines in CMBYN too meandered off into mediocrity (that's the kinder version). It was mostly sentences delivered in a monotone that drove one to fury. I guess like begets like.
In ending, I would like to say that this book has managed to rid me of my ghosts of Oliver and Elio. For far too long, I had been obsessed by them and their fate (like countless others) which had seemed unhealthy to me. I can safely say that I have not thought about those two fictional characters for months now and that in the words of Armie's Oliver "Is a good thing"!!

I'd Rather Wonder What Happened Than Read Sequel

No. I should have known when I read Aciman's oeuvre and felt that Call Me By Your Name was his only book firing on all cylinders.
It's personal, yeah, I know that. Few books touched me like Call Me By Your Name. This book, Find Me: lots of touching but I wasn't involved.
The book is like a sexually-fluid ramp among the best and brightest and most privileged. Do I identify with any of them? Nope. I had trouble identifying a personality difference or a sexual behavior difference between Oliver, Elio, and Elio's dad!
There was almost a juicy mystery...alas, it crashed and burned.
Mr. Aciman can turn a phrase, create an aphorism, and, portray the intricacies of close human interactions. Thank you for not talking down to your readers.

I got so lost.

quite frankly, I'm confused. what a weird book as a follow-up to call me by your name. I don't know if it was just the audio adaptation, but nothing was separated and it took me a while to find out who I was was supposed to be listening to.

I'm just like the rest of you

I decide what titles to use my credits on based on the average number of stars previous listeners have awarded a book. It takes an average review that touches into that fifth star to make me want to bother. Or I read through the reviews, looking at what other listeners had to say about a title. I have to admit I am much more easily persuaded by a negative review than a positive one.

"Find Me" failed both of my tests, and it also had another drawback: Its prequel ends with the main characters already middle aged or older -- and they're preparing to say goodbye to each other. How could the author possibly bring Elio and Oliver into Happilyeverafterland? How could he reprise that delicious Elio vs. himself conflict of so much of the first book, then bring us back to the ecstasy of Rome?

And could any approach Professor Aciman settled on really be satisfying? Didn't he kill any chances of a sequel by using the falling action in "Call Me" to move the characters way too far into their futures?

Yeh, probably. But I loved that first book so much I just couldn't deny this sequel to myself any longer. I longed for more of Aciman's beautiful prose, his deep thoughts of how time changes people and people change time and, well, I won't embarrass myself by trying to rephrase Aciman's deep insights. I was tired of dipping cotton swabs into that intoxicating bowl of emotions "Call Me By Your Name" left me with. Allowing myself maybe a thimble full of that nectar by relistening to the book wasn't going to quench my thirst, either. I needed shot glasses of the stuff, one after another, so I finally succumbed to to "Find Me."

And it really delivered.

I loved the book, not as much as the first one but perhaps more than any other book I've listened to in the intervening two-and-a-half years.

Like "Call Me," it grabbed my with the very first words. "Why so glum?" With that thought, Elio's father becomes captivated with a woman about to sit down next to him on a long-haul train. The interaction that follows was just as captivating as Oliver's "Later" that opened Book 1 and Elio's investigation into the word's meanings, its connotations and emotions, and what they all said about both Oliver and Elio.

The first quarter of "Find Me" really isn't a sequel to "Call Me." And there is no conflict like in the first two thirds of "Call Me." It is a blossoming of a relationship between two people who desperately want something different in their lives than the humdrum they have spent decades allowing themselves. It is a first person account from the viewpoint of Elio's father. While the conflict, isn't there, Mr. Aciman's beautiful prose still enraptures. Prose? It's really poetry. Yet, I can see how so many readers expecting a romance between Oliver and Elio would be disappointed by being taken on this side journey. But I loved the story-telling.

The second quarter of the book is a bit jarring. Elio has a chance encounter with a dignified older man who turns out to be twice his age. Elio immediately begins to lust for this older man. Here, we are back in Elio's head; he's telling the story, which turns into a mystery as Elio and his new lover try to figure out who wrote a sheet of music that Twice His Age has been keeping in a safe ever since his father died. It's a riveting tale, but still not the Elio-Oliver love story "Call Me" fans have been yearning for.

The third quarter of the book starts to tease us with an Oliver-Elio romance to come. Suddenly we are in someone else's head, the head of a pre-Socratics professor who is throwing a farewell party, his farewell party. He interacts with his guests and reminisces about a summer fling he had before getting married.

He's also tired of the humdrum he has been allowing himself ever since he returned from Italy so many years ago. Will he too make a decision to change his life like Elio's father did at the beginning of the novel?

The final quarter of the book is as surprising as it is gratifying. It changed my mood. It made me happy almost four months into my covid-induced solitary confinement in a small Tokyo apartment that weeks ago grew dark and depressing. I can't wait to read it again. I can't believe I did not buy this the day it dropped.

Perhaps I need a new system for choosing audiobooks.

Soothing narration//intimate story

I loved Call Me By Your Name. I guess that has to be said. I think I love Aciman’s writing for his language choices. His words leave me stunned and I find myself often going back and rereading lines over and over again because of their beauty. But I also loved these characters and wanted to see what their lives looked and felt like decades later. I was wholly pleased with the outcomes.

And I would listen to anything Michael Stuhlbarg narrates.

Painfully Beautiful

The poignant simplicity of Andre Aciman’s words convey such an extraordinary depth of feeling. The build up to what most of the readers are looking forward to creates such tension, while at the same time satisfying other parts of our psyche. Again, Aciman gives us what we didn’t know we needed until he finally gives us what we wanted - and he does so in a way that is so painfully human and honest that we never want this story to end. Long Live Oliver and Elio.

Longing for it, finally had it

Memorable moments : their first time together after so long, the talk about Kavafis.... Divine

Lovely Conclusion.

If you enjoyed the novel or film of CMBYN this will satisfy your need for more Elio & Oliver.

shockingly bad

boring irrelevant story that leads nowhere, such a disappointment and downgrade from the previous book