Enigma Variations: A Novel by André Aciman (PDF)

Description

From André Aciman, the author of Call Me by Your Name (now a major motion picture and the winner of the Oscar™ for Best Adapted Screenplay) comes “a sensory masterclass, absorbing, intelligent, unforgettable” (Times Literary Supplement).André Aciman, hailed as a writer of “fiction at its most supremely interesting” (The New York Review of Books), has written a novel that charts the life of a man named Paul, whose loves remain as consuming and as covetous throughout his adulthood as they were in his adolescence. Whether the setting is southern Italy, where as a boy he has a crush on his parents’ cabinetmaker, or a snowbound campus in New England, where his enduring passion for a girl he’ll meet again and again over the years is punctuated by anonymous encounters with men; whether he’s on a tennis court in Central Park, or on a New York sidewalk in early spring, his attachments are ungraspable, transient, and forever underwritten by raw desire—not for just one person’s body but, inevitably, for someone else’s as well.In Enigma Variations, Aciman maps the most inscrutable corners of passion, proving to be an unsparing reader of the human psyche and a master stylist. With language at once lyrical, bare-knuckled, and unabashedly candid, he casts a sensuous, shimmering light over each facet of desire to probe how we ache, want, and waver, and ultimately how we sometimes falter and let go of those who may want to offer only what we crave from them. Ahead of every step Paul takes, his hopes, denials, fears, and regrets are always ready to lay their traps. Yet the dream of love lingers. We may not always know what we want. We may remain enigmas to ourselves and to others. But sooner or later we discover who we’ve always known we were.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐There was an emotional detachedness to the novel for me. Never once did I feel any sort of deep connection to the protagonist, which left me feeling listless the whole way through. I guess I expected more— something along the lines of the sweeping romanticism and longing of Aciman’s first novel— but expectations and reality didn’t coalesce.Paul is a frustrating MC. His romantic contradictions and incessant whining threw me off completely. At first, I was bored with him. Part 1 was a grueling trudge of first love (infatuation?). At 12, he thinks it’s the end-all-be-all with Nanni. He pined (and pined some more), and complained and whined when his feelings didn’t turn into how he expected. Older, still, he holds fast to this deep, irrational line of thought. “He’s still feeling himself out, though”, I told myself. So, I let it slide. And then Part 2 was a lesson in patience, because Paul’s irrational paranoia over his girlfriend and her alleged adultery, is just more cause for him to complain and think himself “freed”. His über-pretentious friends and dinner conversations also didn’t help me connect in a positive way. I just wanted these well-to-do New Yorkers to shut the eff up and be real for once. Part 3 comes along, and Paul has grown into quite the walking contradiction, and fallen so thoroughly for someone else (while he and they are both with someone else). He’s back to longing from afar, and Aciman makes it seem like THIS is the quintessential love of Paul’s life. The story felt like it could be picking up at this point— Our aggravating protagonist has finally settled. That is, until we arrive at Part 4, and all of Paul’s feelings are once more like, “Wait, no, I love this person now. I always have.” It’s too much.I’ve never been in “love” (let alone multiple times, like Paul). I do fall for many often, and love them each in my own way, but I’m not IN anything. So, I can’t necessarily speak to jumping from one extreme infatuation to the next. And it annoyed me. Aciman made each particular lover sound like the ONE , and that’s just ridiculous to me— falling so madly for one person, and then years later another and another and another. Paul so casually flits from caring so deeply for this man, and then his relationship with this woman is wonderful, but that man over there is surely his soulmate (“oh, and couldn’t she and I have something, too?”) but of course no… after years his TRUE soulmate comes back, and he wants her now, but that can’t last, no. And then times goes until he finds someone else to obsess over. It reminds me of that song by Hozier, ‘Someone New’, the lyrics go: “I fall in love just a little, oh, a little bit every day with someone new.” But in Paul’s case, it’s not remotely a “little bit”. I don’t get it. Maybe I never will.Part 5 finally slogged in, but by then, I was totally indifferent to the story. Again, Paul’s pretensions put me off. Of course, he’s so very cultured and intelligent, and everyone he meets/falls for, are also the type of people that, in my experience, are vaguely condescending and untouchable on a social level— I doubt I could ever tolerate them for very long (not to say that I’m a moron. No. I think I’m well-educated and quite a bit the polymath, and can hold a conversation as to the ones expressed herein). But everyone in this novel… they’re so very grandiloquent in the sense that they never seem to spend any time with people outside of their posh, ‘la-di-da’ circles.Paul is searching for himself; to understand— Constantly, in fact, until well past his quarter-life. But here’s the thing: he’s a jerk about it. Paul’s a cheater, plain and simple, and he doesn’t seem to have any qualms with infidelity or cuckolding. And he uses his bisexuality to excuse himself (although, never explicitly) and his lifelong self-discovery. He gives the ‘B’ in LGBTQ+ a bad name. The little “twist” (if you want to call it that) at the very end, surprised me, but infuriated me. It made me hate Paul more than I already had.I didn’t find much to say in a positive regard to this book, but what little good there was came again from how, when you least expect it, André Aciman perfectly captures the crucial, seemingly-insignificant little moments in a life. Whether it be longing to hold a hand, or touch another’s cheek, or the ways in which we wait and regret and break our own hearts… he can really spin feelings to pull you in. I was caught off guard a few times with how well he writes.I shouldn’t compare this novel to Aciman’s other work, but where I appreciated the isolation and dreamy slowness of Call Me By Your Name, in which the love felt self-contained in a bubble of hazy romanticism, Enigma Variations took that and made a mockery of it. Where Call Me By Your Name’s pseudo-pretensions felt unaffected and appropriate, Enigma Variations’ came off gaudy and superficial, and in the end, so did the “love”

⭐If there ever was a book with an appropriate title, ENIGMA VARIATIONS, the latest novel by Andre Aciman, has to be one. The narrator Paul is quite the puzzle since he over a period of many years cannot make up his mind as to whose bed, male’s or female’s, he wants to put his shoes under. He also is the only bisexual narrator I have ever encountered. (As I read this most absorbing and beautifully-written novel, I remembered all the jokes I had heard over the years in the gay community about the scarcity of such an individual.)The book is made up of six sections loosely connected– or variations. Some of them work better than others. The first section “First Love” set in Italy is in a word, perfect. Consisting of 79 pages, it could stand alone as a first-rate novella and is quite simply the best part of the novel. You immediately want to reread it to enjoy again passages like this one, just one of many: “What surprised me was his hands. They were neither calloused nor marred by the products of his trade. The hands of a musician. I wanted to touch them. . . I wanted to place my palms under the care of each of his.” The narrator Paul grows up and eventually lives in New York among other intellectuals. They have read ETHAN FROME and translated Orwell’s ANIMAL FARM into classical Greek. They listen to Shostakovich. They attend lavish dinner parties. They fall in and out of love—or so it seems.What makes this novel required reading is not so much the plot—although Mr. Aciman is a master of surprise endings—but his beautiful language and his ability to convey such a sense of longing, nostalgia, opportunities lost, the difficulties—impossibility sometimes—of finding love. Paul’s beloved father—enigmatic as well—apparently the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree—tells him that we only love once in our lives, “sometimes too early, sometimes too late.” Later in the novel the narrator muses that his father would have said that “diffidence is love, fear itself is love, even the scorn you feel is love.” Finally Paul says that the “leanest proof of love” is the “hope, the belief, the conviction” that the person you are in love with knows more about you than you do.In a particularly poignant passage, an older man speaks from his heart to the narrator about life after he is gone and time past as he stands on his porch one night looking at freshly-fallen snow: “’I’m looking at all this and I’m thinking that one day I won’t be here to see it and I know I’ll miss it, even if I won’t have a heartbeat to miss anything. I miss it now for the days when, the way I miss places I’ve never traveled to or things I’ve never done.’. . . He lived in a future that wouldn’t be his to live in and longed for a past that hadn’t been his either. There was no turning back and no going forward.”There is passage after passage like these in this novel that will thrill you over and over.

⭐After Call Me By Your Name, I couldn’t wait to read Andre Aciman’s latest novel about the loves and desires of Paul, a bisexual man living in Italy and New York. The first half about Paul’s relationships with Nanni, Maud and Manfred is gorgeously written, aching, tender and sexy, and it’s wonderful to read a book about a bisexual character. Unfortunately after that the narrative goes downhill. Paul’s desire for Chloe, who suddenly appears on the scene, does not ring true. I didn’t care for her and stopped caring about what happened to him too. Both seemed unnecessarily dissatisfied and spoilt, and wasted what they claimed was the love of their lives. By then however I did not believe in their love and did not care for them anymore. It gets worse when Paul falls for another woman towards the end of the book. His indecisiveness, charming with Manfred, becomes annoyingly repetitive and leads nowhere. I almost abandoned the book at this point as I was so disappointed, but I carried on and the sudden end couldn’t have been more silly. Everyone ends up with the wrong people, stupidly and senselessly so. What a waste of their lives and my time. I am so disappointed. I even picked up on some phrases lifted word by word from CMBYN, and wonder if Aciman wrote this novel fairly quickly. The first half as I said is a gem, which makes it doubly sad the second half was such a let-down. The jumpy timeline and sudden appearance of new characters was grating too, I felt I didn’t really know Chloe & Maud, let alone the last woman whose name I’ve already forgotten. Nanni and Paul’s father were charming and good people, beautifully written. Manfred and Maud sounded quite interesting too, I would have liked to know more about them. The theme of bisexuality is obviously close to Aciman’s heart, and was explored in CMBYN too. I hope CMBYN2, for which Aciman is writing the script, will be written with more care.

⭐This subtle, shimmering novel is about different states of love and the enigma of desire, both straight and gay; it provides a complex web of inner speculation, about the reading of bodily signs, the interpretation of silences, the sensing of mood changes, about the decoding of texts, of finding hidden meanings in conversation, about dreaming endlessly of what might be and what might have been. It’s about trying to penetrate the mystery of other people, those that one tries to get closest to, merge with. It’s about who defines not just who we are but who directs the path of our life or who indicates other, more ghostly paths, the ones we might have taken if we had read the signs more accurately and had the courage to act on them. It’s told with such an acute candour, in such a beautiful, lapidary style, and with a sophisticated appreciation of the novel’s fluid form, you feel you are in the hands of not just a modern master but someone who has the uncanny ability to anatomise the human heart in its most defenceless, self-deluding and self-restraining states, especially within the context of key relationships. When I read Aciman’s first novel ‘Call me by your name’ I did not think he would be able to better it, but this, though covering different territory, is its match in quality.The title is a good one. The opening section picks its way through the tricky subject of a twelve year old boy’s infatuation with a young carpenter who is doing some work for his parents. Seen through the boy’s innocent eyes, the older man’s feelings for him and his evasive behaviour is an enigma that the boy, Paul, does not unravel until years later when he revisits the scene of this love affair and discovers a shocking truth. As a portrait of a first, callow, immature love, it is perfect; it stands in contrast to what follows. In the next section Paul has graduated and is living with Maud, but their relationship, cool and reasonable, is an enigma, not least because Paul is lusting after a guy at the tennis courts, called Manfred, and is also vaguely attracted to a silent girl called Claire; in this section we get to know Paul’s adult self and the contradictions in his nature which will inform the rest of the narrative. The third section covers the two year ‘courting’ of Manfred who, all that time, remains inscrutable, giving away no signs that he’s interested until near the end when truth finally erupts. This section is enigma at its simplest, born of inhibitions, fear of exposure, a paucity of signs and signals, shyness. In the fourth section, which for me is the most profound and serious of them all, Paul is now reigniting an intermittent affair he had at University with a fellow student, Chloe. He is living with Manfred, she is married with children; neither are satisfied with these domestic relationship, especially Chloe; they meet every four years or so. This relationship, more than any other, takes us deeper into the elusive, contradictory, perverse, persistent nature of love and sexual desire; I think it’s the most satisfying section of the book. It’s followed by a final short, rather surprising section – I thought, to balance the sexes, the focus would move on to Manfred, who has remained in the background, an enigma, to balance what is essentially the story of a bisexual nature. But no, rather boldly, Aciman introduces, later in Paul’s life, yet another possible love interest, which Paul feels might be his last chance, Heidi, a journalist. It needn’t be, of course. Much is made of Edith Wharton’s enigmatic exclamation in her diary that, at the late age of 46, she has ‘at last tasted the wine of life’ – for some, love, the epiphanic, life-changing kind, can come late in life. Paul feels, that despite all that he has gone through with the carpenter, Chloe, Maud, Manfred, Heidi, the silent Claire, he has still not fully quaffed the wine of life, that somehow the essence of love has eluded him. The reader might beg to differ.It’s written in stylish prose full of intimacy and wisdom, sometimes so good I couldn’t help reading it aloud to savour its pleasures and to bring out its many nuances. It shows how you can tell the essential story of a soul by homing in, not on the humdrum details, nor captured in a plot, but through its most life-shaping relationships.

⭐Having absolutely loved “Call me by your name” this novel proved for me very disappointing after the opening section. I thought the author was trying to be too clever and the complexity of the thought processes, and in the end their repetition, was, for me, a cause for irritation. The novel does not flow, in my opinion, through its various stages of supposed development. Sadly I, personally, cannot recommend this book. I was interested by the seemingly cool reception Mariella Frostup gave the book when she interviewed the author for her Radio 4 programme.

⭐Disappointing. ‘Enigma Variations’ starts off with a well written chapter where the narrator reminisces about his childhood on the island of San Giustiniano. After this the story line rapidly deteriorates. I almost gave-up reading this book, but persisted in the hope it would improve, but it didn’t. I really loved ‘Call me by your name’ but this book doesn’t live up to the skill the author demonstrated in that story. I would not recommend ‘Enigma Variations.’

⭐A superb writer whose characters live with the reader long after the book is completed. Call me by your name was the first book of his that I read and I adored it, so wanted to read more of his work. I wasn’t disappointed in any way. Well worth a read and will make the reader want to read more.

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