CULTURE

The Call Me by Your Name Sequel Novel Reportedly Brings Elio’s Father Into the Spotlight

Elio, Oliver, and Samuel’s journey will continue in book form at least.

March 21, 2019

Photograph by Mario Sorrenti; Styled by George Cortina

Forget the fireplace scene, the retro-chic wardrobe, and the peach—the most memorable part of Call Me by Your Name was the profound and tearjerking speech Elio’s father, Samuel, played by Michael Stuhlbarg, gave his son (Timothée Chalamet) about love and heartbreak at the end of the film. The monologue prompted fans like Frank Ocean to declare Professor Perlman “my new dad,” and though Stuhlbarg was viciously snubbed by the Academy, his character will soon get the turn in the spotlight he so clearly deserves, in author André Aciman’s upcoming CMBYN sequel.

The new novel is titled Find Me and is scheduled to be released on October 29. Publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux released an official plot synopsis this week, according to Vulture, which reveals that in the follow-up to his 2007 original, Aciman will jump many years into the future—likely to a time even further ahead than the decades-later epilogue of the first novel—and spend more time on Samuel’s life, rather than focusing solely on Elio and Oliver’s tumultuous relationship.

“In Find Me, Aciman shows us 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,” the synopsis reads. “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.”

In a statement to Vulture, Aciman explained why he made the decision to revisit Elio and Oliver (and Samuel!) more than a decade after he first wrote their story. “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,” he said.

While the mere existence of a sequel novel seems to bode well for the chances that the director Luca Guadagnino will soon move forward with a sequel film, the Call Me by Your Name star Armie Hammer all but completely dashed those hopes earlier this week. “I’m sort of coming around to the idea that the first one was so special for everyone who made it, and so many people who watched it felt like it really touched them, or spoke to them. And it felt like a really perfect storm of so many things, that if we do make a second one, I think we’re setting ourselves up for disappointment. I don’t know that anything will match up to the first, you know?” he said. “I’m like, that was such a special thing, why don’t we just leave that alone?”