Enigma Variations: A Novel Hardcover – January 3, 2017

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.

I loved this book. I found Paul a fascinating creature and being inside his head was thrilling and thought provoking... So much passion and promise and so much overthinking and self sabotage. Aciman is am amazing writer. He truly transports the reader. This book plays out like 5 short stories. I loved meeting up with Paul at various stages in his life. He loves men, he loves woman, his fluidity was challenging and interesting to me. Ultimately this book is all about love... and all about the beauty and the terror of being under it's spell.

In February 2019, the book discussion group at The LGBT Center had a good-sized group to discuss "Enigma Variations" by Andre Aciman. Boy, was this an upsetting book. Most of us liked the first story but learned to dislike it as the book proceeded, and to hate it by the end. A few readers where entranced by the longing throughout the connected stories, but more readers were upset by the connections revealed throughout the book.This is a novel of longing and obsession, and Aciman manages to keep a number of trite relationships in the air - with both men and women - overlapping and leaving out information, to keep the idea of a man who wants a relationship, or a constantly new relationship, interesting. He's obsessed with loving, not actual relationships. The narrator, Paul, seems to believe in two types of relationships: hot lustful relationships in the future and boring settled-down relationships with a partner.The first story has echoes of "Call Me By Your Name," which the group generally liked when we read it long before the movie, but many found that something was "off" about it. The same is true here. It seems good on the surface but there's something that isn't psychologically correct. Paul has a Freudian attraction to his father but he has relationships with woman that don't seem right, also.Technically, the novel is well written. He writes beautifully with a bit too much "purple" prose but it's not realistic. For example: "I'm shrouded in silence, like a beggar hooded in burlap, skulking in a cellar. I am a cellar. My passion feeds on everything but air, then curdles like bad milk that never goes bad enough. It just sits there."But the story doesn't reflect real life. It idealizes people, especially physical lust for men and makes the narrator's mental attraction for women secondary, and it all comes out rather "gooey," as one reader put it. This is a gay group, but we found the sex with the men pretty good but the sex with women very weak.Because the stories are told in flashbacks and big looping circles to reveal important information in non-sequential order, you keep reading, hoping it will all pull together. But at the end, you don't want to put the book aside, but want to throw it away violently.Sorry - read the first story, which is fine. Then stop to keep from irritating yourself.

El interés decrece a cada página. El autor ha sabido establecer un contenido muy identificativo pero repetirlo en todos los libros ha hecho que el próximo me lo piense dos veces antes de adquirirlo.

This book is so beautifully written, even though one might ridicule the very essence of love elaborated in the book, one can not keep themselves of the innocence and humble reflections of the text. You may give it a try, and you might fall in love with it.

Anyone who's looking for the perfect expression of longing will find it in this book. The author captures love, regret, hope, pain & pleasure in exactly the way we all feel them.

Tiene todo el estilo de CBYN, habla de historias a lo largo de la vida del autor Paul, todas relacionadas con su vida amorosa. El autor juega mucho con los tiempos, recuerdos, sentimientos. Está muy buena.

I really, really liked this book. Aciman has such a deliciously melancholic, erotic and elegant way of describing human emotions. The prose flows seamlessly, the writing is so raw and intimate that I felt I was deep in Paulo's head the whole time, the same way I was in Elio's head while reading Call me by your name. Paulo's thoughts are messy, obsessive and contradictory. Some people might not like the constant introspection but I love it, it makes the characters so much more real to me.There are 5 stories in this book, all with the same protagonist. The first one is about first love, second about jealousy, third about longing, fourth about regret and fifth about emotional connection. Every story has it's own turns and twists and intertwines with the others, making it quite confusing to puzzle Paulo's life and feelings, which made me LOVE the format of this book. I enjoyed the individual stories (some more than others) as well as the book as a whole. It made me think about the kinds of love and connection there are and how we experience them.Enigma variations has become one of my favorite books (next to my ALL time favorite CMBYN) and I look forward to re-reading it.