read this: call me by your name
“I wanted him gone from our home so as to be done with him. I wanted him dead too, so that if I couldn’t stop thinking about him and worrying about when would be the next time I’d see him, at least his death would put an end to it. I wanted to kill him myself, even, so as to let him know how much his mere existence had come to bother me, how unbearable his ease with everything and everyone, taking all things in stride, his tireless I’m-okay-with-this-and-that, his springing across the gate to the beach when everyone else opened the latch first, to say nothing of hi bathing suits, his spot in paradise, his cheeky Later!, his lip-smacking love for apricot juice. If I didn’t kill him, then I’d cripple him for life, so that he’d be with us in a wheelchair and never go back to the States. If he were in a wheelchair, I would always know where he was, and he’d be easy to find. I would feel superior to him and become his master, now that he was crippled.”
-From Andre Aciman’s . Click here to read the first chapter.
I normally don’t go in for stories that focus on love and sexual obsession, however, Aciman’s prose nails you to the chair, pulls the pin from the grenade. Recommended.
February 4th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Passages like this one remind me about the PASSION of life, as well as the responsibility of the writer to bring such passion TO life on the page. Wonderful, just wow.