Find Me ★★

André Aciman, Faber & Faber, R290

Penning a sequel to the award-winning book, Call Me By Your Name that inspired an Oscar-winning film was never going to be easy. Aciman has described the word “sequel" as “poisonous” and Find Me certainly doesn’t take the form most fans would be looking for. The first 100-odd pages of the four-part book don’t even mention the beloved lovers, Elio and Oliver. Instead, an ageing professor meets a young woman on a train to Rome and they soon have a love affair. One eventually figures out that the character is Samuel, Elio’s father. Elio and Oliver appear in the second and third movements; Elio falling in love with an older Frenchman in Paris and Oliver married and miserable in New York. It is only 12 pages from the end where the lovers meet. Aciman has delivered what feels like Tom Ford’s film adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man – a series of beautiful but hollow perfume adverts. Find Me is heavy on philosophical ruminations, middle-class Europeanness and ageing men’s fantasies.