Sequel rights and wrongs: why some stories should be allowed to end

It makes sense to continue The Handmaid’s Tale in the Trump era, but going back to Call Me By Your Name risks ruining the first book (for which there are spoilers here)While Luca Guadagnino’s 2017 film of Call Me By Your Name ended with lovers Elio and Oliver parting ways on the phone, André Aciman’s novel showed us what happened next. Throughout the book, the torment of erotic obsession builds slowly, with Elio experiencing all the agonies and ecstasies of a first serious crush as he worries over Oliver. Then Aciman shows us their futures, beyond their fateful shared summer in Italy: their separate adult lives are full of marriage and children, with only lingering memories of the time they spent together years before. I first read the final chapters of Call Me By Your Name through my fingers, completely torn between wanting and not wanting to know what happened next. But ultimately, Aciman’s ending underlines that youth and its pleasures are temporary, that just as the summer, with its heat and ripening fruit, must end, so too must the affair. That it does so makes the novel what it is: poignant and bittersweet. Continue reading…
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