A 'Call My By Your Name' Sequel Novel Is Officially Being Written – Could A Movie Follow?
Call Me By Your Name is officially getting a sequel, but not in the way you think. Author Andrew Aciman, who wrote the 2007 novel upon which Luca Guadagnino's Oscar-winning film was based, is penning a sequel book that is set to hit bookshelves this October. Aciman's announcement of the Call Me By Your Name sequel novel, titled Find Me, comes after months of back-and-forth over whether Guadagnino plans to follow through on his promises to direct a film sequel. Perhaps the book could provide the inspiration to push Guadagnino into action.
Twelve years after Aciman's acclaimed debut novel Call Me By Your Name hit bookshelves, Aciman's publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux confirmed that a sequel titled Find Me is set to be published on October 29, 2019.
Aciman's sequel will pick up decades after the events of Call Me By Your Name and follow "Elio's father Samuel, now divorced, on a trip from Florence to Rome to visit Elio, who has become a gifted classical pianist. A chance encounter on the train leads to a relationship that changes Sami's life definitively. Elio soon moves to Paris where he too has a consequential affair, while Oliver, now a professor in northern New England with sons who are nearly grown, suddenly finds himself contemplating a return visit to Europe."
The sequel focuses more on just the doomed romance of Elio and Oliver, but on the Perlman family as a whole, with Elio's father Samuel in particular, who was played in the film by Michael Stuhlbarg, getting a more prominent role — likely following up on the character's hints at regrets that he's harbored in the heartbreaking monologue that drove so many to tears.
Aciman said to Vulture in a statement about the sequel:
"The world of Call Me by Your Name never left me. Though I created the characters and was the author of their lives, what I never expected was that they'd end up teaching me things about intimacy and about love that I didn't quite think I knew until I'd put them down on paper. The film made me realize that I wanted to be back with them and watch them over the years — which is why I wrote Find Me."
Aciman's dreamy 2007 novel provided the backbone for Guadagnino's sumptuous, swooning film, but apart from that key monologue that was lifted word-for-word, it's a fairly different beast. Lightweight and sparse, Aciman's book leaves room for the imagination and for the reader to fill in the gaps between Elio and Oliver's interactions, all of them heavy with meaning. But despite the differences between the source material and the gorgeous film it inspired, Aciman's publication of Find Me could provide inspiration again for Guadagnino to direct the sequel that he seemed so eager to helm. Aciman's novel isn't too far off from what Guadagnino envisions either: a story that takes place decades after the first blissful romance, following a bittersweet meeting between Elio and Oliver, played in the film by Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer, respectively. It could be a fantastic film, that is, if he can get his stars on board — Hammer cast doubts on a Call Me By Your Name sequel recently by saying he doesn't think "anything will match up to the first." We'll have to see if Aciman's novel can take up that challenge.