The Portuguese poet, Fernando Pessoa, is known for his ‘heteronyms’ — his term for the 75 distinctive authors of different genders, thoughts, feelings and languages he created and under whose names he published his poetry, criticism and philosophical writing. Find Me has four chapters — ‘Tempo’, ‘Cadenza’, ‘Capriccio’ and ‘Da Capo’ — each referring to four different musical movements. And in each, the four main characters of different ages, whose lives and loves get entangled in a not-so-complex plot, narrate in first person singular how they gravitated towards each other in inexplicable ways.
Perhaps, as one of them explains, it was all in the stars. The first voice is that of an ageing academic who falls for a woman half his age whom he meets in a train. His son, Elio, is a pianist, whom the couple meet before the chapter terminates. The second voice is that of another ageing academic, who inevitably falls for Elio, and his passion is reciprocated by the young pianist. Together, they unearth the truth about a mysterious musical composition that connects them with dark familial secrets.
Elio, meanwhile, feels the stirrings of desire for his first love, Oliver, a college professor, now married and with children of his own, whom he had met in his teens. Oliver is the third voice, who probably through telepathy, reaches out across the continents to Elio. The fourth and final voice is Elio’s, and quite predictably, Oliver has flown all the way from America to join him in old Europe and its picturesque cities, where all the main characters kind of walk into the sunset, never mind the inevitable deaths.
Unlike Pessoa’s heteronyms, all four voices are unmistakably Aciman’s. For all their pretensions to high culture, they spout nothing but words that signify nothing. Sample: “Above all I liked her forehead... which hinted at thoughts I couldn’t put into words but wanted to know better...” For those who have not caught on yet, this is the sequel to Aciman’s Call Me by Your Name , on which the 2017 eponymous film was based. The characters are prone to philosophising about life and death, but it is much too anodyne to be affecting. To borrow an expression from Aciman, it’s all written in “pale sepia ink”. Like dewdrops, it could evaporate in sunshine.
The author is a heritage and culture writer from Kolkata.
Find Me; André Aciman, Faber, ₹599
