Sara & Cariad's Weirdos Book Club - Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman with André Aciman

Episode Date: October 8, 2026

This week's book guest is Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman.Sara and Cariad are joined by New York Times bestselling author of Call Me by Your Name André Aciman.In this episode they discuss film adaptations, longing, Italy, passion, East 17 and JLo.Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you!Call Me by Your Name is out now and available here.Support the podcast, enjoy ad-free listening and more weird and wonderful bonus content by signing up to our Patreon at patreon.com/c/weirdosbookclubFollow Sara & Cariad’s Weirdos Book Club on Instagram @saraandcariadsweirdosbookclub and Twitter @weirdosbookclubProduced, recorded and edited by Naomi Parnell for Plosive.Assistant Producer is Amy Townsend-Lowcock for Plosive.Artwork by Welcome Studio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sarah Pasco And I'm Carrie Ad Lloyd And we're weird about books We love to read We read too much We talk too much About the too much That we've read

Which is why we created The Weirdo's Book Club A space for the lonely outsider To feel accepted and appreciated Each week we're joined by amazing comedian guests And writer guests To discuss some wonderfully

And crucially weird books Writing, reading And just generally being a weirdo You don't even need to have read The Books to join in It'll be a really interesting, wide-ranging conversation And maybe you'll want to read the book

afterwards. Thank you for reading with us, we like reading with you. This week's book guest is Call Me By Your Name by Andre Asimann. What's it about? A romantic infatuation between a 17-year-old boy and visiting American student.

What qualifies it for the weirdos book club? Well, a man fucks an apricot. In this episode, we discuss. Film adaptations, longing, Italy, Passion, East 17 and Jalo. And joining us this week is Andre Asimamon himself. Andre is the New York Times bestselling author of Call Me by Your Name and Find Me and various other works of fiction and nonfiction.

He's also the editor of the Proust Project and teaches at the Graduate Center in New York. Hello and welcome to the podcast. It's Andre Assemann. Hello, Andre. Thank you. Welcome. No, not welcome. Please welcome, Mars. Yeah, we'll be welcome. We'll be welcome. We'll be welcome to have you here. Thank you. Thank you so much. It's really exciting. Yeah, we're talking about what is one of the most foremost texts of the past 20 years. I was going to say. It's celebrating its 20th and the

Yes. Call me by your name, which of course was a worldwide bestseller, but was also turned into a film and now is a graphic novel as well. Correct. So this is an incredible achievement with this one book that you wrote 20 years ago. I'm very lucky, put it this way. On the other hand, I don't really focus on the past. I look forward to whatever it is that you have to do next. And it makes you very, very nervous. And at the same time, if it's successful, oh, then it'd be. becomes part of the past. And you always worried, put it this way. Yeah. And I always worry. And I'm never self-satisfied. And I wish I could be because that would be much easier. Yeah, yeah.

I think, though, sometimes you meet people who are satisfied and they're not very fun to be around. Oh, no, they're horrible. I like people who are insecure and all my friends, all anybody I know that I like are insecure to the utmost. They're the best, aren't they? You're always a bit on edge with that. You could have been a stand-up comedian. because you've got the right personality. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think you want that in an artist, don't you? An artist who just goes, I'm done. Oh, no. And I don't believe you're an artist. I believe you got lucky and one story came through. But like an artist is someone who keeps saying, could I have done that better? Oh, God.

Yeah, yeah. If I had to reread my books and I would start saying, my God, you repeated the same word on the same page. That's not allowed. But, you know, it's published now. And in terms of form and in terms of form and telling a story in a new way, just like when someone takes a book and they make a film, they're not trying to recreate the book, they're trying to make a movie of a story.

And then with the graphic novel, that, I mean, while I think an incredible job has been done, the details that are in there, the vital details. But then there are these gaps because we're not getting as much of Elio's inner life. We're seeing facial expressions, and especially facial expressions giving us so little. Oliver gives us so little in the graphic novel, but I do think he's flirty. It's weird, though, because I feel like each version of this story offers like, like you're standing in a different place in the room.

Yes. So, like the book, you are absolutely in Elio. You're next to him and he's telling you everything. And then the film, you're sort of, you're a bit more distance again because you're seeing Elio and Oliver. You're not in Elio's head as much. So you're sort of sometimes like you're at the dinner table. Yeah, and you see like the,

mom looking and you see the Malfowler looking and you get a bit more sense of like in the way that Elio misses in the book like our character is flawed and how much his dad is aware of. Yeah. In the film, I said that the dad seemed to have been aware of many, many things. Yeah. And I said, no, that's not a good idea. Yeah. Because you want to surprise, you want to surprise Aalio and you also want to surprise the audience.

Yeah. You don't want them to know that the parents know. You want to find out. And so that was important. And I think that in this book, the conversation with the father is very important. But it's not that seminal in this book and in the graphic novel. Basically, I had two characters who are gay and clearly are somewhat ridiculous. And the characters don't even appear in this book except for one image.

And in the film it's much more of a big deal that this very gay couple come. Very openly gay. And I played one of them. I didn't realize that. Oh my God. How did I miss that? Well, I didn't know that I was going to be. They said, come to the, what is the film set and then show them.

And then they said, well, we don't have the actors. They can't come. But would you and the producer show up and be the gay couple? I said, okay, fine. I know, I'm fine. How did that feel to be in your story? I'm in the fiction that I made. I mean, in the fiction I have created.

And I mean, it's the same thing as when you see your name sort of bandied about on the credit. And now I'm doing the graphic novel. And I'm going to be doing a musical as well. Wow. And I'm saying, this is a nice story, but it's now out of my hands. And I wanted to be out of my hands. And I've always said this, that, you know, I've written the book, I'm done. Yeah.

You want to make a movie? You want to do a graphic novel? It's yours. That's very healthy. Oh, you have to. You're very healthy, Andre. You have to. I don't want to intrude and give them notes and whatever.

No. I only did that once. And what was that note? The note was when I said they cannot, the parents cannot talk about their gay son. Yeah. And they know about the gayness. Because that is the surprise.

Yeah. The payoff. Yeah. When did you start writing? Oh, I started writing. writing when I was extremely young. I think I was 10 years old. I used to write poetry in English schools when I was in Egypt.

And so I had basically all I read was, you know, Tennyson, Alfred Noyes, Walter Delamere, you know, these sort of very sort of staplish in the 60s and 50s. They were very ordinary poets. And nowadays, I think we don't, we don't read them at all. But by and large, those poets were there, and I was writing poetry, trying to outdo them. Of course, I couldn't. Not even in my wonderful fantasies. I would ever be able to compete with them. But I did.

And then I started writing prose, and that's it. But then I had to stop for quite a few years when I went to school and graduate school, and basically I started learning languages and whatever. What did you study? I studied comparative literature. I always did, which was not fair, but I wanted to do that. And I studied ancient Greek. So I mean, I was extremely lucky given the fact that I was an immigrant in America.

So that was very unusual to be this concerned about literature. And my father always supported that. He said, you know, do literature. You're good at it. or whatever. And I wrote this book, call me by your name, usually it takes me about a year and a half to write a book. This book I wrote in three and a half months. Wow. It just literally wrote itself. Yeah. I wonder if there's something about the obsession and the intensity that's very focusing as you're writing as well. It, it, I was very focused on it because I was,

usually I go away with my family to Italy and that year we weren't going to go to Italy and so I just said okay why don't I write a novel who knows and so I took the summer and little did I know that I gave it to my agent she said did you finish the book? I said when I wrote another one

and she said what kind of book is it it's a gay love story a gay love story and I figured okay I said, if you don't like it, it goes into the drawer and we never discuss it again. She called me the next morning. She said, does your wife know? I said, yes, she does.

I said, okay, well, we're going to sell it. And she sold it the next day. Wow. But it was nice. It was a surprise. Usually it's like, well, we'll see what we can do. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think a lot of writers hope for those stories to, you know, trans.

transcend to them. There are some things that are so universal and I can't imagine a human being or a human adult who didn't have something that happened at 16 or 17 involving love for somebody else that they don't look back on and going that's formative of me and I'll never feel that again

because you know too much later on you can't feel something so the other elements of the story can be different but everyone knows how he feels everybody's had it. Yeah, everyone's gone to bed and not been able to sleep because of their thoughts and the things their brain is doing. And I was thinking as well, like, you capture so well the proximity of like, and I'm referring to the OG now, of like when you do love someone. But the fact that Oliver and Elio are sort of not sharing a room, but they have like a bathroom connection.

He was. He's in his bed. He's in his bed. His parents have given him his room. It's like everything about it. It's like when someone is so near you as a teenager, which happens as teenagers, you know, like you are sort of hands. about and people are near you in a way that I think as you get older, like you're in your own space and you don't see people in that same way. It's that intensity. You capture that so well against this backdrop of this boiling hot Italian summer. Everything about it is like the apricot ripening on the bloody tree. Like everything is just exploding with tension and yearning.

Yes. But like, was that an intense experience to write those intense feelings? Yeah. It was. I mean, I didn't describe many things. I didn't describe, for example, I did describe the smell of coffee rising from the kitchen upstairs. I did describe the smell of rosemary and the smell of the sunflowers all over the place. These are descriptions, but I didn't describe the beach, the sea. I didn't describe any of it. I didn't even describe Italy. Yeah.

But it was in the background. It's there. And so, and I don't like to describe things anyway. That's not my forte. I always like to describe feelings. Yeah. And in describing feelings, I wanted to basically nail as much as I could remember of what it is to feel that you're drawn to somebody who's next door and you can't even go there. And then he walks into your room and you're basically, whatever it is that you were doing,

you're wanting him and you're already sort of soaking in your desire. And at the same time, you can't show it because it's not allowed. Yeah. I think you describe more than you think. I think the description of heaven. Oh, yeah. Oliver. I think what you do amazingly and maybe you don't realize it is that you describe a little corner of a house.

or a little corner of a moment, which means that the reader's brain fills in absolutely everything else because all we needed to know was that. And then suddenly I'm there. Someone lying on a side of a pool in that kind of hot, gorgeous heat with one limb in the water.

Yeah. So I think you describe more than you think and it's enough. And in terms of the house, the creaks, the fact that you can hear someone's feet, the fact that you notice their absence and you absolutely notice their presence. I think it's why it's good writing as well because you're right. You don't say,

so in Italy, the hills aren't, it is, but you describe the housekeeper and the way she speaks to them and the bikes and, you know, riding to like the piazza, the piazetta. We don't need to know what shoes they're wearing. Yeah, like it's, because, like you said, it's a sketch, it's enough that then my brain just fills in everything else. Your brain fills up everything else. And that's why I always say, I don't describe that much. But you are the ones. Yeah, we're doing that for you. You're doing it for me.

Thank God. I'm lucky. But you're doing that great thing of a great writer of just enough for our brains to... But also, I think like a director, a good director shows you where to look and you think you did it for yourself. I saw the key was there. That's definitely the bad person. It's like, the director showed you the key in his shop, but you think it was you. And I also enjoyed, you know, having, being aware of the film, that the book, I think the book is like...

a richer experience because you get so much more stuff. Like, you know, who's the sweet girl who lives at door via? Vimini. Vimini. Yeah. And, you know, all these extra details that a film. Their friendship is so beautiful. Yeah.

In the film, it just was totally eviscerated. Yeah, it's not there. It's not there at all. She doesn't exist. She does in the graphic novel. Yes, yes. She does come up. Yeah.

And they have a wonderful friendship. Yeah. And she's written to him lots of letters. And you wouldn't. expect Oliver to be the kind of person to receive those letters and to write back to her. It's an important moment in the book. I think that's when, because, you know, he's been a bit standoffish later. Is he curt? Is he a bit really superior at times? He's so intelligent. It's when he's so, number one, sort of heartbroken for her and then this really beautiful friendship,

that's when you realize, oh, okay, he's really special. But that's what's interesting that you can't have it in the film because films are so short that it, if you didn't, you didn't, you know, did that in the film, he becomes a different character. Whereas the film distills him down to like, hot boy. Yeah. That you're not sure. And so I loved finding it in the book and being like, oh, who's this person that like adds, like just gives me more detail to Oliver, which a film just doesn't have time to do. Films just don't.

And also because she's 10 and dying, she sees more clearly what their relationship is and how much Oliver cares for him. She tells him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He likes you more than you like him or something. And he's like, oh, yeah, I think also the lovely thing that you capture is the confusion. Like, you know, you are like almost shouting at the book when you're like, they just, you both like each other. But Oliver does know that. But that feeling when you don't, when you're not sure, when everything is meaningful, but you keep misreading it.

Like, again, we've all been there of like someone says, but I thought you didn't. But you said this thing. The age, Oliver's older. He's 24, but he has enough experience. This isn't his first. No, no, no, no, no, no, not his first. First rodeo. And that's correct.

He's rodeoed before. Yeah. And so what you're watching with Oliver is someone who is more in control of themselves. Yeah. And maybe slightly it's a cat playing with a mouse at times. Yeah, it is. It is very much. And he is to know.

But at the same time, if you look at the text of both the graphic novel and in the film and in my novel, all three do the same thing, basically. When Elio makes his confession, he confides absolutely nothing. Yeah, yeah. He says nothing. No, it's still like, should I die or speak? Yes. Which, again, could be so easily construed, especially at this time when, you know, Oliver's staying with his family. It's the mid-80s. It's not okay to just be like, yeah, I'm gay,

let's hook up. Like, yeah, he doesn't say that. No, he doesn't. Which I think makes Elio so interesting as a protagonist, because he, we, as the reader, and see the mistakes he makes without him seeing them. It makes him seem even more young and teenage, doesn't it? Well, he does. I mean, when he says something like, I think he does say something like that. You know, I know absolutely nothing about the things that matter. What things that matter says, you know, Oliver. And he says, where things, name them, he doesn't, he won't name them, he won't say anything. And yet at the same time, the reader understands and

has been getting a glimpse of what is going on. There's something about explicitness, though, that does make certain emotions sort of fly away. If Elia was really good at sort of saying, this is what I want, this is how I want it. We lose 90% of the longing, the arousal, which is built on tension. Tension and nothing solid. It has to be built on nothing. It's like, I guess, like religious people with faith, you have to have no certainty. Oh, God, yes.

As someone who's really actually also enjoying, who's marinating because if he ever says anything, then he loses something of the hope. Yeah, yeah. And the dreams. He loses the dream of it. The hope of what could happen if you say something, once you say something, that hope is, because you then know what happens. So he's marinating for as long as possible in this because he knows how special it is. Yeah. To feel this much for someone.

He is savoring it. Yeah. Do you think he is? Yeah, I think he was. I think he's scared. Yeah. He's, well, at one hand, he's very much hoping that something will come through. And he does say it.

I mean, he doesn't explicitly say it, but he dares to at least say something. And the other one says, no, we can't talk about this stuff. Oh, God, okay. There's a very nice scene in the film where they kind of talk around the war memorial and then kind of come back together, which I thought is a lovely sort of sense of what's happening. with them. But again, I enjoyed that in the book, it just takes longer and it's more real. You know, it's not one conversation and then, okay, like, it's several stuttered conversations. How does the film deal with the Kiara and the sort of local girls?

They're there. They're there. Yeah, yeah. It makes it. It tidies it. It tidies it. And it makes it slightly like the timelines are clearer with the film of like, oh, he very much does, he does stand her up. Because he's with, I think, Oliver. But at the same time, he He basically fucks her when they're in the next room. Oliver is supposed to be there, but he's not. So, and I think that he's somewhat torn. Yeah. Or basically he likes both.

Also, I think, but I also thought there's a point where you get so aroused. You're just aroused all the time. That's what I feel for him. I mean, you've already masturbated in a shirt and an apricot, an actual human being. Yes. Yeah, you get that sense in the film as well. But I did feel sorry for, it's not Chiara, who's the other girl, Marcia? Marcia.

Marcia, I did feel really sorry for Marcia. Because she abandons, he abandons her. He abandons her. And she's, it's that thing of like, she's such a sort of a B character, but she doesn't know that. She doesn't know there's this love story going on. And, you know, she really likes him. She thinks he's this mysterious musician and, like, he sleeps with her and says he does like her. So I really, I felt really sorry about her.

But also for the girls, like with him, it's other. people that get to come in and be exciting. Yeah. You just live there. This is just life. And they also just don't know that there's this drop. Like, because they are to look at, they're two men that are ignoring each other. Yeah.

Or if you don't know that men are gay. Yeah. And if you're a 17-year-old girl and you're like, where he talks to me, he's rung me, he asks to meet me. Who's, you're not interesting. I'm the one that's interested. And I felt really sorry for them of like, oh, you have no idea of this epic love story, this Greek tragedy that's happening over here. Yes.

Because they think they're Juliet. You know? Like, no, babes. Like, you're not actually, you're the nurse in this story of anything. You're the nurse. It's not your story. So should we talk about Italy? Yes.

So you went to Italy every year with your family, you said. I used to go every summer. But I lived in Italy for three years when I was, you know, 14 to 17. Right. So I loved it. But I hated Italy initially. I really hated it. But then I got to love it.

What did you hate about it originally? I don't know. I just didn't like being sort of cast away in Italy. Had you come from Egypt at that point? Right. So very different culture. Totally different. And mine was very advanced, very westernized at the time. Now it's not. But it was extremely English and phobic of everybody else. So a different world. And Italians were very limited. And they were, you're talking about the early 60s, and they were not really over the world war yet. And they were just coming out of it. And they were still very, in many respects, feudal.

Their habits were sort of age-old habits that I didn't quite like. And so I didn't like Italy at all. I felt a stranger there. I preferred France. But then the French were also kind of backwards. as far as I was concerned. But you can't tell them that, okay? My trajectory was always to be in England.

That was going to be my home because I had gone to British schools. Yes, that's exactly what I knew. But it turned out to be different. But Italy was not the place I wanted to be in. And eventually I got to love Italy and I loved it probably because I loved the film, The Leopard. I don't know why.

But sometimes a film will do something for you. And once I had the leopard in place, I knew that I loved Italy. And so I went back to Italy all the time. I go back every year or every two years. And I love going back. And you speak Italian? I speak Italian. And do you go to the same place every year or a different place?

No, same place. At least I start in the same place. But then I move around a bit. I always like to go to different places. And it's been wonderful. Italy is, in fact, my other home. I don't think I have a home, but that's a different issue. But it's become my homeland.

Yeah. It's interesting that your most famous book is such a romance and your home country is such a romantic country. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You've got a romantic man. But you live in Manhattan, your main base. Yes. Is that like being in a J-Lo film?

I can't imagine she's a goddess. We're lucky that she passes us. She talks to you. And she says, hello, do you know the directions for this? You will fall flat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree. No, but Manhattan has its own pleasures as well.

Yeah. But it's not Italy. No. I had a very intense experience in Italy when I was 19. We were in schools. We were teaching English as a foreign language. Where? On tour.

So we were in a car. So it's intense. There's three of us. There's one girl, one boy. me and the boy, I had a boyfriend in England me and the boy started to fancy each other but we all slept in the same room every night This is your life

Unfortunately it's not as It's much rhymier than this It's much more These, we always stayed in hotels which sex workers used because they were really cheap So like Milan and Rome So we did we were mostly North Italy Little places

Little places on tour He was dressed as Tarzan I was playing all the other characters we were always trying, we realized that we could say lots of English words rudely and the children didn't know. So Tarsama said, can I have some jizz? And I would say, would you like hard jizz or soft jiz? And then once a teacher came up and she said, we know what you're doing. Because we were hung over. Oh, my God. Hung over at 8 in the morning. Why get teenagers to teach? You could buy cigarettes outside. They had these machines outside everywhere. So you didn't have to go inside anywhere to get your fax. You just pull over the car. We had one album. We just played over and over again. What was the album? Californication.

Oh, where I'd touch of this. That really dates exactly when it was. And I've never written so many diary entries. And I've felt everything so intensely. And I've never been able to go back actually. Oh. I leave my husband. Something I miss about my life.

And I would never have thought so because at the time I felt so hard done by it. Then you want someone you can't have. Yeah. Or especially if you can't even tell them that you want them. But now it, to me, feels like the ultimate being alive. The ultimate in feelings that isn't grief and crying on the floor. It's a very visceral feeling. It doesn't want you.

Yes. Because they don't want. Or because you haven't told them. You haven't told them. And why haven't you told them? Well, if you're in a relationship, I mean, that's the only time you can have this when you're not 17 is if you're not going to leave your partner for somebody. It sounds like you're talking yourself into having an affair. I think Andre said I should.

I think the mammal in us, I think that's the most alive you can feel. I feel like the body wants you to have sex more than anything else, more than it wants you to have a sandwich or drink. That keeps our species alive and I think that's when you feel it most strongly when it's building and building and building. But that's what I mean.

I think it's your teenagers are where you first experience that and it's like first love or like that intensity. And you don't know that you will ever have it again. You can't put it in a logical framework. I once felt that for so and so and then I got over them. Yeah, and it's so baffling as a teenager. You know, like your world is just turned up. You go from what seems like quite a rational person

who could see like, well, that person's over there and I don't need to, why would I go, why would I need to go and press my body against them? Like you said, this, like, this part of you unlocks. It's like, I must be near them as near as physically possible. Also, not knowing someone and filling in all the blanks. Which I think earlier is very guilty. You create a person who is perfect.

Yeah. And then you get to know them. Oh, God. Once you get to know them there Oh God This is who you are That's why I worried for Elio I was like

Don't get too close to this Oliver He is not going to live up to these dreams He knows so much about the etymology of April He knows so much He's very clever Yes He's very clever But Eleo's father is also very clever

So he needs a clever man But Oliver knew more About April Oliver did know I had to do that I don't know Do you have a love of language Yes I do

I love it And so I gave the father his own etymology for apricot. And then he's corrected by the other guy. And I love that. That was me showing off. What are you working on at the moment? What's like the next thing for you? Oh, I'm writing about a violin that was lost in the Holocaust.

Wow. And that is some people are trying to retrieve it. Was it stolen lost? It was, no, it actually was given to somebody for safekeeping and it disappeared. Okay. And so now they have to basically find it. And of course, it's like looking for, what is it? Needled in a haystack.

Needled in a haystack. Thank you. The idea is that you can't plan to look for something because that's going to take your whole lifetime, if not two or three lifetimes. Yeah. It has to come of itself. What is it about stories that attracts you? Like, what is it about a story that makes you think, oh, that's, I guess it's still yearning.

There's still a little searching. It's a search and it's sort of hopelessness and sort of the desire to keep looking for it. And at the same time, and I've always said this, at the same time that you desire somebody, you want to stop desiring. And I did that in Call Me by Your Name when they sleep together. and Elio doesn't want him to touch him again. Doesn't want to be touched. And so Oliver tries to prove to him that he's not quite over yet. Yeah.

He wins him back. But that moment of disgust is too strong, but it's a low-level repulsion as he's getting away from someone. Yes. And we've only had that. And we've had it for people that we actually didn't expect to feel that way for. And sometimes with that amount, the stress. the feelings, I think it makes complete sense to want to be nowhere near them because you have to build them all again. Yeah. If so much of it was fantasy, yes, but it's always

the two things can't coexist. That's so discordant. Yeah, he doesn't exist in reality, does he? Like how Elio sees him, there's not much reality in that vision. So a fantasy, a teenage girl fantasy would be like a pop star that you see on stage, calls you up, it's you. Yeah. But the reality of them would be just, like, awful. It would be absolutely. It would be absolutely awful. We told this story before my, we went to see a band called East 17, which was like a big boy band at the time. And my friend's sister was crying so much, they called her on stage. And she was on stage with these boy band. And she just froze. She just stood there. And we were watching her on the big screen and we were like,

why isn't she hugging them? Why isn't she kissing them? Why isn't she? And she just was like completely and you could see it was like, oh, she didn't want to be that close. Oh. She wanted to cry from the audience at the idea of them. And then suddenly your next next to Brian Harvey and he's trying to put your arm around you. And human beings, you know, smell. Yeah, well, look, you can, yeah, exactly. There's pause, this sweat. And she, and she kind of stood there and then they like brought her down.

And they're grown men and she's a little girl. And we were like, what was that? And she just couldn't really speak. And at the time I was like, oh, how weird. I didn't know this story. I have told this story before. I have you. I'm loving it for the first time again.

It was probably just too much. Yeah. Elio wants to get away from him, like magnets repelling each other. And now he can start to win. back again. Sarah who adapted it. Sarah Maxwell, who's done the graphic novel. So she wrote something about her wife. Yeah, but she

so, I thought this was so beautiful and I also thought it's quite an important thing to remember in terms of queer stories and gay storytelling. And it just says and lastly to the queer community, who deserves more than just to yearn but to love, this story is what it is

and it's telling about two characters is not trying to say something about a whole community or gay relationships or all gay teenagers. or anything like that. But I think that's one of the things that must be sometimes frustrating for the gay community is that because

so many stories don't end with happy endings, they don't get... Yeah, they don't get... The longevity, the long-term relationships, that those other stories as well are maybe missing or there aren't as many of

or they historically haven't been as many of. I've never been negative about things and no one ever has died in my books. Yeah. And I don't like death. And I don't like that. And so I wanted it to go on. And I wanted the father, because he's very much like my father, the father to essentially tell the boy, you know, it's going to be difficult.

But don't kill it before it's time. Yeah. And that sort of thing was always my philosophy and my parents' philosophy and so on. So I like that. Yeah, I think it's beautiful. It's such an achievement, Andre, like to have this story just keep. on living and keep on breathing. And it's a testament to the story that people want to keep telling it again and telling it through their lens. Like so, yeah, just what an achievement

that this book 20 years on is still relevant, is still helping people, still making people turn the page and feel things, I think is incredible. And also that you can read it twice. So I read it twice essentially. I read one version and then the other version and still was so desperate with them to get together even though when I knew things were happening. Well, thank you so much for coming to us. Thanks for having me. It was amazing.

So brilliant. Tell Jolo we say hi. Oh, okay. Thank you for listening to the Weirdos Book Club. Call me by your name, the graphic novel by Andre Asselman, illustrated by Sarah Maxwell McNichol is out now. You can find that more.

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