don't fear the sun.

This is not a book review.

I think I'm going to call it more of a book experience, you know?

And more than anything I'll be talking about Michel, because the rest of that character gallery can kinda go fuck themselves? (I love you, Elio, but also fuck.)

I read Call Me By Your Name two summers ago, one of the darkest periods of my life, and like a lot of people were won over by the literary elegance, the solid character portrayal and the tragic scope of Elio's story. A couple of rereads later, though, I began feeling slightly... unsettled by Oliver and Elio's relationship and after much thought, stopped shipping it altogether. It's not really a age-thing to me, though the fact that Elio is 17 doesn't help, it's all the unhealthy, toxic aspects of their romance and how they're romanticized that leave me with a bad taste in my mouth.

I read Find Me about two weeks after having read Call Me By Your Name, I was aware of the general fandom consensus against the novel and didn't have the biggest expectations which were maybe both met and exceeded, to varying degrees.

I think about Find Me in fragments. The first chapter with Samuel and Miranda I've read a whopping number of one time. Maybe more like a half time, because I slept my way through. That is not because I'm against reading het ships, it's because it read more like an old, pervy man's fantasy about meeting a young woman who wants him more than life itself. It didn't read as real or even realistic. And if I want unrealistic, unreal stuff, at least let it be queer, so I can relate to it on that one account? Aciman has never been very good at writing women. Marzia was a good example in the first book, Miranda gets more air-time and is exactly as 2D. Mafalda, the housekeeper, is the closest Aciman gets to a rounded female character in these books (Enigma Variations didn't shape up to be better) and she's still a stereotype.

Oliver's chapter was well-crafted and fortunately, brief, which I think saved me from actively skipping it, it was over in, like, 20 pages as it were. Oliver still reads as a douche and the fact that he and Elio - spoiler - end up together regardless of everything is the true sacrilige of these books.

Which leads me to the last chapter of Find Me that I have no words about. It's wrong, it's unfair and again, reads like either an old, pervy man's fantasy of "douche getting redemption" or pure fan service (which incidentally didn't even make the fans happy).

That was it, that was what I had to say about Find Me as a book.

Now I want to talk about the one thing that makes the whole 260 page trainwreck worth it and the single reason that I have fished Find Me - but not Call Me By Your Name, never again Call Me By Your Name - out of storage and allowed it a place back on my shelves, rereading (parts of) it regularly.

Michel.

Michel is the main character of the second part, Cadenza, of the novel. A 60 year old lawyer that Elio meets at a concert in Paris (where Elio teaches at the conservatory now) and initiates a brief, but very intense affair with. That's it. It's the second longest chapter in the book and hands down, the best vignette of the four. The character studies of both Elio and Michel are extremely refined and strong, you know them immediately (with Elio, you recognise him immediately) and by the end of the chapter, after which Michel will never really show up again, you don't want to let go.

I may not ship Elio/Oliver anymore, but heavens, do I ship Elio/Michel. Like I said, it's not the age difference that squicks me out.

Michel stands out so vividly in my mind that Call Me By Your Name would be the first and only non-original canon universe from which I ended up roleplaying more than one character at once, playing Elio for a long string of months and Michel on the side. Now, a year later, I've returned - not to playing Elio, but definitely to playing Michel. I'm so serious about it that I've blemished my old tattered copy of Find Me, the dust cover completely ruined from hours sitting between my hands, by highlighting Michel's dialogue throughout the whole Cadenza part and simply bought a new copy of the book to read, untouched. This is the first book I've loved enough to own two identical copies of it at once. It has never happened before.

The thing about Michel is that he's at once both bombastic, self-centered, father-fixated and self-assured - as well as shy, gentle, caring and extremely understanding of Elio. Those two different tracks in him exist simultaneously, like they do in most people, and makes a complex character it's impossible not to love (unless, I guess, you're a rapid Oliver/Elio fangirl who sees anyone else as a threat, although Michel is actually the one who points Elio back to Oliver - the one thing I'll never forgive him for).

Together, Elio and Michel push each other out of their comfort zones, Elio by helping Michel with the unresolved loss of his father and Michel by helping Elio realize that he's been running all those years, not from Oliver, but towards him, or both at once, maybe.

Theirs is a beautiful, mature relationship and Michel is a tragic figure who gets left behind in the narrator's pursuit of his own issues - and, a bit, I think, in the author's haste to cement Elio's and Oliver's relationship as the big romantic end game, but that's probably just my opinion, because distaste.

Someone put a screenshot of the ending dialogue in this chapter and I felt like sharing it here. These are the words that are ensuring that I just keep writing Michel drabbles, to scratch my own itch, since literally no one else in the CMBYN fandom cares about Michel. If I have to read fanfiction about him? I have to write it myself.

Most of that writing, I do to this song (Carte Blanche; Back to Henri), because it reminds me strongly of him.

So, no, Find Me is not the literary masterpiece that Call Me By Your Name was. It's not as well-written, it's not as elegant, but the character study in some places is better and some parts, at least, feel way less problematic than Call Me By Your Name, so even if you haven't read the first book or don't want to - or maybe, especially if that's the case, I think Find Me is good. It's worth it on its own merits. I wish they'd just make that film sequel to CMBYN by filming the Cadenza chapter, that way they wouldn't have to include Hammer at all. No losses there.

That's it. That's the experience.

I found this image on Tumblr eons ago and never saved the user who put it up and now I can't find it there anymore, so sorry to whoever made this amazing bookstagram picture. It's my favourite.