My Roman Year

by André Aciman

The author of Call Me by Your Name returns with a deeply romantic memoir of his time in Rome while on the cusp of adulthood.

In Roman Year, André Aciman captures the period of his adolescence that began when he and his family first set foot in Rome, after being expelled from Egypt. Though Aciman’s family had been well-off in Alexandria, all vestiges of their status vanished when they fled, and the author, his younger brother, and his deaf mother moved into a rented apartment (eventually revealed to be a recently vacated brothel) on Via Clelia. Though dejected, Aciman’s mother and brother found their way into life in Rome, while Aciman burrowed into his bedroom. The world of novels eventually allowed him to open up to the city and, through them, discover the beating heart of the Eternal City.

Aciman’s time in Rome did not last long before he and his family moved across the ocean, but by the time they did, he was leaving behind a city he loved. In this memoir, the author, a genius of "the poetry of the place" (John Domini, The Boston Globe), conjures the sights, smells, tastes, and people of Rome as only he can. Aciman captures, as if in amber, a living portrait of himself on the brink of adulthood and the city he worshipped at that pivotal moment. Roman Year is a treasure, unearthed by one of our greatest prose stylists.

'Aciman pieces together a rich tapestry of human emotion in a way few other contemporary writers can match.'
DAZED

'Transporting . . . sensusous.'
OBSERVER

'Compelling and witty.'
NEW STATESMAN

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Italy, Biography, Travel, Audiobook, Biography Memoir

354 pages, Paperback

First published October 22, 2024

About the author

André Aciman was born in Alexandria, Egypt and is an American memoirist, essayist, novelist, and scholar of seventeenth-century literature. He has also written many essays and reviews on Marcel Proust. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, The Paris Review, The New Republic, Condé Nast Traveler as well as in many volumes of The Best American Essays. Aciman received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University, has taught at Princeton and Bard and is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at The CUNY Graduate Center. He is currently chair of the Ph. D. Program in Comparative Literature and founder and director of The Writers' Institute at the Graduate Center.

Aciman is the author of the Whiting Award-winning memoir Out of Egypt (1995), an account of his childhood as a Jew growing up in post-colonial Egypt. Aciman has published two other books: False Papers: Essays in Exile and Memory (2001), and a novel Call Me By Your Name (2007), which was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and won the Lambda Literary Award for Men's Fiction (2008). His forthcoming novel Eight White Nights (FSG) will be published on February 14, 2010

Reviews

[Trevor · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my third André Aciman book that I have read, and like the others that I've read, it is a bit hit and miss.

Things that I liked about the book were:

- the descriptions of Rome, Paris, Naples and Alexandria
- the character descriptions
- the writing style

What I didn't like so much was the amount of introspection, this was a bit tiring by the end of the book.

Having said all of the above I did, on the whole, enjoy the book and look forward reading to more of his work

[Kerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Audio Arc from NetGalley for an honest review. Release date Oct 22, 2024

This is a memoir by the author best known for the novel, Call Me By Your Name.

The audio is read by Edoardo Ballerini. When Ballerini reads Italian works his narration is amazing He has just the right tone and inflections and a voice that understands the beauty of the language. It is what drew me to this audio. Once again he was perfect for this narration.

This memoir covers one year in the author's life in Rome when he was 17 years old--a senior in high school and had immigrated to Rome with his mother and brother from Alexandria Egypt. His parents are Turkish and Italian Sephardic Jews whose families immigrated to Egypt in the early 1900's and settled in Alexandria. Andre’s parents had done fairly well in Alexandria but the changing political climate causes the family to immigrate to Italy in 1965. Andre, his brother and mother leave Egypt by boat and are met in Italy by Andre’s uncle who has secured a place for the family in Rome. It was unclear to me exactly why the father stayed behind. It is intimated that a woman is the reason although he tells the family that he is being detained due to family business and/or the government legal concerns.

The brothers and their mother who is deaf are left to fend for themselves in Rome. They have little money, the mother has a handicap and none speak Italian well but speak English, Arabic and French. Andre, as the oldest is expected to assist his mother as she reads lips and writes as her main forms of communication. Andre and his brother have attended an American school in Alexandria and hope to find similar schooling in Rome. Italian schools would mean repeating several grades and both boys do not want to do that.

There are so many problems, and it is rather inspiring to hear how the family works to overcome difficulties with so little. Andre’s father is mostly out of the picture, rationalizing that he cannot live with the family (or even in the same country) due to disagreements with his wife. Andre often describes his mother’s temper and outbursts now directed at him and seems to understand his father’s decision even though it places a direct hardship on his own living situation.

The events of this year are told from the viewpoint of a 17 year old boy. This is not a grown man writing a memoir about his youth. It is told instead as narrative non-fiction. The reader lives through Andre’s days, going to school, bookstores, daily chores and various family events with Andre. The writing is beautiful, so rich at times that I couldn’t listen to it for long periods of time. The romanticism overwhelmed me at times. Every situation, even the mundane seemed to be told with such significance. I felt often I needed time between chapters to digest. This made me think that in print form it might be better read in chunks than straight through. Also I could really have used a family tree. On Audio only, I found myself confused as to uncles, aunts, cousins, friends of one or some, of these. There are many names and relationships to keep straight in Italy, France, Egypt, and the United States.

I did feel it was an excellent listening experience and I would recommend it in that form. I do feel there is much I missed as I am not familiar with this author’s work and so think I missed some of the nuance of how his life has contributed to the stories he writes, as I find that so interesting in memoirs by author’s. It does make me interested in reading one of his novels.

There is less of Rome here than I would have hoped for and little history of the time. This is a young boy’s story. It illustrates in a personal story how difficult immigration is. So much of what we hear in this country has to do with its effects on us and it worth looking instead at how a family copes and the problems that must be overcome just to survive. Even though it takes place in 1965 I think much still applies. It is not an easy story, and cannot be told without reading about a lot of hardship. But it is well told and I am glad I got to listen to it.

[soph · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to Faber for sending me a proof copy of this book.
I typically love Aciman’s writing and his books, but unfortunately this memoir didn’t have the same evocative power as his other works; it felt unnecessarily long winded and a little self-obsessed in the internal dialogue of Aciman’s coming-of-age self. Nevertheless, the writing is still good, and the Rome Aciman depicts is certainly visceral.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got this Book as a gift from a friend who grew up in Rome when i did in 1960`s. the writer had a very different neighborhood and experience than we did. They were refugees from Egypt and poor and relying on the Uncle for life in Rome and their minimal survival.I recognized a lot from my life in Rome and the schools and his long busrides exploring the city. It was a very special era in Italy not many foreigners lived there then,we learned Italian fast as young children and made our way into Italian life. The book was wayyyy too long and repetative about his neighborhood and neighbors . It especially seemed to bother him. and yet when he returned years later he did not seek out his friends lovers relatives. strange. a good revisit to the time of my life.

[Kurt Neumaier · Rating 2 out of 5]

I would have called him whatever the Italian for nerd is so fast if I had seen him reading Ulysses for fun as a high school student

[Laura McNeal · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is something messy about Aciman’s writing style, a circular, meandering path that he takes through nearly every scene, that made me impatient for about a hundred pages. I almost gave up on the book, thinking that it was narcissism and a fondness for Proust that made him think he could digress so erratically in his sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. Why did an editor not curb him better, I thought? Why did Aciman not make basic things, such as chronology, more clear? And then, little by little, I grew attached to all of the relatives, friends, and neighbors who in the beginning were so confusing. I became used to and even fond of Aciman and his digressions, possibly because at that point in the book, Aciman was starting to fall in love with everyone—to appreciate them and present them to the reader in a new, more redeeming light. He does the same with Rome itself, and the way he writes turns out to be a perfect way to express the pain, joy, and fearfulness of many things: exile, family, love, desire, hope, and nostalgia.

I thus found myself underlining this passage on page 348: “Writing might even bring me closer to this street than I’d been while I lived here. Writing wouldn’t alter much or exaggerate anything; it would simply excavate, rearrange, lace a narrative, recollect in tranquility where ordinary life is perfectly happy to nod and move on. Writing sees figures where life sees things; things we leave behind, figures we keep.”

This is only part of the paragraph, which builds on this theme. Is it all clear and true? I don’t know. I don’t know if I even understand the term “figures” in the same way he means it. But it feels true. And the sense of desperation in following this line of inquiry is clear enough. Nostalgia is a sneaky, savage thing. We want to go back and find who we were and see it all again and appreciate it better, but we can’t, and yet we go anyway. In Aciman’s case, the journey is well worth it.

[Hanna (theworldtoread) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to Netgalley and Farrar, straus and giroux for the arc of Roman year by André Aciman! This book is out on 22 Oct 2024.

If there's one thing you need to know about me, it's that André Aciman is one of my favourite writers. Especially his (partial) memoir Out of Egypt, about his Jewish family's expulsion from Egypt in the 1950s, is one of my top books of all time. Roman year is essentially a continuation of where Out of Egypt leaves of, following the writer, his brother and his parents during the course of a year living in Rome after leaving Egypt.

Naturally, as this book is a follow-up to one of my absolute faves, I couldn't help but compare it to its predecessor at times. Roman year felt a little less purposeful than Out of Egypt, with a slightly less well-rounded storyline. But in the end that does tie in with what the author describes: a year of waiting, of indecision, of looking back and looking forward at the same time. It makes sense for the story to feel a little bit like that as well.

In the end, I think this book highlights what Aciman does best. His description of his love-hate attitude to Rome, his longing yet apprehension for New York, his idealised love for Paris, the memories of Alexandria he doesn't want to long for. The characters are vivid, the prose is to die for. No one quite captures a sense of place and belonging like André Aciman can.

[Sid]

i WILL read anything andre aciman writes (yes, this is a threat)

[ariana · Rating 4 out of 5]

quite densely packed and joyfully written. lovely anthropomorphism of cities, and distinct descriptions of various places. while grounded in setting, there was page-turning character development (though he coulddd have reconsidered how he wrote about someee romantic exploits)….

[Gyalten Lekden · Rating 3 out of 5]

The language and sentimentality of this memoir was a pleasure to fall into, but the whole time I had to almost ask myself what the point was. Of course, maybe if you have read a lot of Aciman’s work then this will hold more meaning for you, but for me I struggled to see why he memorialized this transitional year in his life, and what he hoped to share about himself from this memoir. I think I will be hard-pressed to be much wowed by any teenager’s final year of high school, which is what his year in Rome amounted to, and while he did end with a chapter that really tried to dig out some meaning I wasn’t particularly moved.

The writing was ethereal in its style, and yet at the same time trying to appeal to the senses. He would contain entire conversations with multiple speakers in a single paragraph, compressing time and memory in ways that were effective in terms of bringing those places to life. But they were ultimately the experiences of a scared, intelligent, emotional, undecisive teenager. Once in a while Aciman would conclude a paragraph with some sort of pithy sentiment or lesson, but these often felt as airy and ethereal as the prose. It felt like he was including them because a memoir is supposed to have such things, but it took effort to pluck them through the dreamy veil of his experiences. This made the final chapter, which is all him as an adult trying to sort through his time in Rome, including returning to the street he lived on with his family in tow, feel less organic than the rest of his chapters. It felt like it had to do too much, too much meaning to make in such a short time, and yet I do suppose that was his experience, as well. So maybe it is fitting.

There are some beautiful insights in the final chapter, which certainly offer a peek into his relationship with literature and writing, which I found moving. “What my favorite authors were asking of me was that I read them intimately—not read my own pulse onto their work, but read their pulse as though it were my own, the height of arrogance. By trusting my deepest, most personal insights, I was in fact tapping into, or divining, an author’s vision.” I suppose that the hope is that the reader find their pulse throughout the memoir, their pulse in his evocative stories of familial unrest, of nervous, fumbling encounters, of the pleasure of bookstores, and so on. While I was impressed by the language and prose I felt there was always some distance that kept me from really feeling a full immersion, from finding him through finding myself in his anecdotes and memories.

So that is all to say, sentimental and skillful writing, which I cannot deny, but not writing that spoke to me.

[Sophia Araya · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 ⭐️ Evocation is what I enjoy most about reading. When written words can conjure up nostalgia, embarrassing memories, fantasies, deep empathy, or vivid sights, tastes, and smells, that’s when I know I’m reading something special. For me all of that was achieved. Add subtle beautiful prose to the mix (think less flowery than call me by your name) and you get an authentic and moving memoir disguised as a coming of age novel :)

[Bagus · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was 1966 when André Aciman, then a 15-year-old boy, fled Alexandria with his deaf mother and younger brother following the expulsion of Jews under Nasser's regime in Egypt. They arrived in Rome, the city of his imagined imperial grandeur, which presented itself as a maze of hardships, embodied by his dominant Uncle Claude, who sublets the family a dilapidated flat in a working-class district of Via Clelia.

The first half of the book chronicles the struggles of his integration into Roman society, with endless bus rides to school, humiliating encounters with his uncle, and a growing awareness of his precarious position in a foreign land. The Via Clelia apartment, though located in the heart of Rome, never becomes a sanctuary for him. It is an uncomfortable, transitional space that resists transformation into a true home, mirroring the ambivalence he feels toward both the city and the idea of belonging. The apartment is a metaphor for the state of exile itself, a place neither here nor there, full of potential but never fully realised. Rome, for Aciman, is forever a place in-between where he was in a state of limbo, and his unease in Via Clelia becomes a manifestation of the emotional and cultural distance he feels from the city.

The author’s memories of Alexandria, a cosmopolitan city rich with cultural blending and mingling, contrast sharply with the Rome he now inhabits, a city that feels distant and impersonal. His past is an idealised, irrealis realm, one that he can never return to, and the present, marked by discomfort and alienation, is grounded in the stark reality of life in Rome. The discomfort Aciman experiences in Rome is not just about the physical distance between the two cities. It is also about the loss of a world that was never stable to begin with. The cosmopolitanism of Alexandria, where multiple languages and cultures intermingled, is a world that is increasingly out of reach. In My Roman Year, this loss is highlighted by the quiet, everyday moments of life in Via Clelia where he spent his time in the apartment delving into books, moments that highlight the gap between what Aciman remembers and what he experiences.

Aciman’s exploration of memory and identity revolves around a deep sense of longing for a world that exists only in the past, in the irrealis. The pain of exile is not merely the loss of a physical place but the erosion of a way of life, of cultural richness, hybridity and the fluid exchange of ideas that has disappeared from his life. In My Roman Year, this loss is particularly palpable, as Aciman navigates the streets of Rome, a city that, despite its beauty, remains a place of emotional exile. The tension between past and present, between what was and what could never be, defines his experience, leaving him caught in a space that is neither fully foreign nor truly familiar.

Ultimately, My Roman Year can be seen as an extension of the themes Aciman explored in Homo Irrealis: Essays. It is a meditation on the fragility of identity and the impossibility of truly returning to a place or time once lived. The apartment in Via Clelia, much like the fragmented world Aciman grapples with throughout his writing, is both a refuge and a reminder that the world he longs for exists only in memory. By the end of the book, Aciman has come to love the city he once resented, but only as a place preserved in memory. He revisits Rome years later as an adult married with three sons, only to find that its streets and inhabitants, like the river Heraclitus wrote about, have moved on. The only place where that time exists unchanged is only in these pages of writing he wrote about.

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. I was anticipating something that I didn't get, a livelier exploration of this great city from the viewpoint of a young refugee from Egypt, and what I felt I got was a rather boring account of his fractious family. I didn't like most of his family as presented. I didn't really get much of a feel of the city. I suppose perhaps other readers will be swept up in his travails, but maybe I simply wasn't in the right frame of mind.

[Elaine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved Out of Egypt so much when I read it, and of course, Call me By Your Name, and Rome is one of my absolute favorite places on Earth, so I had high hopes for My Roman Year.

While there is still great writing here, and the depictions of Aciman's family in diaspora are fantastic as are his Italian neighbors - so many characters sketched so well in just a few lines, we spend too much time with Aciman himself, who during his Roman year, is a somewhat self-obsessed teenage boy. Thus, in the way of brainy insecure teenagers everywhere, Aciman holds himself at a disdainful remove from his surroundings, both personal and physical, only opening to Rome and his neighbors when he's on the verge of departure. This feeling of being locked in Aciman's brain during a solipsistic stage of life makes the book seem longer than it is.

[Begüm · Rating 4 out of 5]

i’ll try to be objective but my love for him and his books is beyond everything! what a heartwarming but also shattering journey! can’t wait to read my next andré aciman book<3

[Jenna Godwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

This was a coming of age memoir about the author’s experience living in Rome for his final year of high school. Overall a well written memoir but an extremely long winded one. Mostly I felt like I was trapped in a labyrinth of the author’s thoughts. His sentiment was difficult at times to pinpoint. The last few pages were splendid, where he describes the complicated nostalgia of returning to a place that makes you, where you simultaneously feel lost and found, where all that remains are your memories, and you realize how much you have changed by how much the place has changed.

What I enjoyed:

The descriptions of Rome, the sights, sounds, smells, were all tangible to me in the writing. I enjoyed the vivid development and characterization of his family members and people he met along the way. I enjoyed the small moments he shared with his aunt, his father, his mother and brother that were key in how he developed as a person. These moments helped me to feel connected to him through similar complicated feelings that I have towards my own family.

What I didn’t enjoy:

He is quite long winded and oftentimes lost me in his meandering thoughts about Rome and who he was/became in Rome. He is quite pretentious for a teenager as we glean from his judgements about people he meets, judgements he makes about his modest lower-middle class apartment in Rome, and his daydreams about a future life. He reads classical literature and sips espresso in Roman cafes while complaining about his shoddy circumstances. 🙄 I often found myself annoyed by this young man. I suppose we all have experiences in young adulthood that might make us cringe while looking back upon them as adults, but the way the author described his thoughts on such matters was quite pedantic.

At any rate, an enjoyable memoir, and I felt his ultimate appreciation for his Roman Year despite his complicated feelings during his coming of age in this place!

[Ariel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the story of one tumultuous, emotionally charged year that Aciman spent in Rome as a young man when his family was expelled from Egypt for being Jewish after the Six-Day War. I expected it to be a love letter to Rome, but his family were living in a very poor quarter, and much of the time Aciman was longing for Paris and Alexandria and dreading the eventual trip to New York City for college that he eventually wound up making. He is already a bookish fellow who sees the city through a screen of words on the page and when he does finally fall in love with Rome, it’s through a film about Tuscany. His family problems are intense: he is forced to mediate between his volatile, charming deaf mother and his philandering but charismatic, intellectual father who is living in Paris. They are linked to a squabbling, eccentric, extended Sephardic family that stretches across Europe, North America and even Uruguay, but ultimately considers itself Ottoman Greek.

What makes this book so extraordinary is Aciman’s exquisite, vivid writing, his ability to summon up a world of characters and places from the page. He has an unusual gift for linking his own introspection to larger, perhaps universal themes. I had to stop and read other books for work while I was reading it and I kept longing to rush back to this one.

It’s not quite as great as “Out of Egypt,” the first memoir. but it inspires me to re-read the first book and also to read what may now be his most famous book, “Call Me By Your Name.”

Many thanks to NetGalley and to FSG for an advance reader’s copy of the book.

[Elizabeth Tuttle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roman Year reads like a literary bildungsroman as young Aciman navigates his tumultuous relationship to Italy, immigration, fantasies of America, women, school, and his family. This is ultimately a story about compromising between dreams and reality, learning to appreciate what is in front of you (a task tricky for any youth!), and managing competing desires. Like in his novels, Aciman's prose is absolutely lovely. He focuses more on fleshing out the characters and relationships in his life than on the setting itself, giving this memoir a novel-like quality.

Thank you to NetGalley and FSG for the e-arc.

[Dianne Alvine · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the mid-sixties, Aciman was an adolescent. He and his father, mother, and brother lived in Alexandria, Egypt, and they had a privileged life there. Things changed drastically, and dramatically when Nasser, president of Egypt, expelled the Jews, and confiscated their possessions. Unfortunately, this wasn't the first time in their lives that the family had been displaced.

Again, they became refugees, and with the help of an uncle who already lived in Rome, Aciman, his brother, and his mother (who is deaf), were displaced to Rome, where they lived in a very small apartment owned by the uncle, who used to run it as a brothel. The family paid the uncle rent, even though they were on a very restricted budget. The father did not accompany them, as the parents did not get along well.

Aciman tells of his one year in Rome as an adolescent and as an outsider, trying to find his way and his identity. He recounts his memories, various anecdotes, the people he meets, and the difficulties he had while finishing his last year of high school in Rome.

Even though the book moved slowly for me, the writing was beautiful. There were parts that held my heart closely like when Aciman borrows a bike from his friend, Gianlorenzo, and with the beautiful Roman sun smiling down on him, he pedals over the narrow and ancient cobblestone streets and alleys and talks about all the sights and sounds on his journey.

In his memoir, Aciman relates the emotional strain that being a refugee had on his adolescent life, as well as his love/hate relationship with the beating heart of the Eternal City.

[donnalyn ♡ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I adore Andre Aciman's writing, truly truly - his attention to details and particular phrases and his painfully nostalgic longing for everything all the time. I learned a lot about his life that surprised me, and this was an interesting book to read about migration, Rome and Egypt in the 60s, Aciman's slight fruitiness... It is very Call Me By Your Name-esque, perhaps less happens in this though. It's not so exciting but it is a very relaxing and thoughtful read. It's interesting to see how he romanticised Paris but hated Rome, when the two seem equally culturally and historically rich to me. It made me think that across all countries there is a familiarity amongst those who grow up on the poor side of town and dream of something else while also feeling terrible for having those dreams, and I liked to hear his musings about that....

[Síle · Rating 3 out of 5]

There’s no denying Aciman’s talent for painting a city with words. Rome breathes under his pen—sun-warmed and echoing with memory. My Roman Year offered that intimate sense of place I expected, but the pace? Achingly slow.

Interesting, yes. Rich in detail? Absolutely. But somewhere along the cobblestones and reflections, I found myself dragging my feet a little too often. It’s a thoughtful book, just not always a gripping one. More stroll than story. A lovely experience in parts, but I’m not sure I’ll remember much of the journey a few months from now.

[Xenja · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quando vide il fagotto di oggetti tra cui mia madre stava rovistando per decidere cosa portarsi via, Flora scorse una fotografia di me da bambino e disse che se la sarebbe presa lei. Nessuno di noi avrebbe avuto il coraggio di dirle di no, dato che era sempre stata la mia quasi-mamma. La rividi due decenni dopo in una cornice d’argento sulla mensola del suo caminetto a Venezia. Mi tornò in mente quel giorno in via Clelia e l’istante in cui si era inginocchiata per prenderla, reggendola delicatamente da due angoli. Era un gesto gentile, come qualsiasi altra cosa in lei.

1967: la famiglia Aciman, provata dalle persecuzioni antisemite del presidente Nasser, fugge dall’Egitto e si rifugia in Italia. Intorno a questo avvenimento, per lui cruciale, si è sviluppata la vita dell'autore, nato a Alessandria in una famiglia di ebrei sefarditi di origine turca. Scampati per un pelo alle persecuzioni degli egiziani, ma privati di ogni ricchezza, gli Aciman sbarcano in Italia poveri, timorosi, indecisi, e si stabiliscono a Roma, in un quartiere popolare, e precisamente in via Clelia, con un po’ di inevitabile puzza sotto il naso. Tutto questo secondo volume della sua autobiografia ci parla dell’anno che il diciassettenne André ha trascorso in via Clelia; narrazione in stile nettamente proustiano, molto lenta, molto dettagliata, e non certo altrettanto elegante, nella forma e nella costruzione, della Recherche. Tuttavia, le situazioni e i personaggi, soprattutto nella seconda metà, sono davvero affascinanti. Forse la mia è un’aberrazione, ma sono convinta che gli ebrei, popolo eternamente senza terra, cacciato ovunque si stabilisca, ha d’altronde il grande privilegio di non aver radici, di vagare su questa terra da una capitale all’altra, da un continente all’altro, con la disinvoltura di chi è cittadino del mondo, parlando molte lingue e industriandosi in mille avventure che io, provinciale, non posso fare a meno di invidiare.
3/4

[Joe G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this - a very thoughtful gift from my girlfriend’s aunt and uncle! A great evocation of place and time while also touching on questions of identity and growing up. Would be very interested in his first memoir about growing up in Alexandria (which directly precedes this).

[Marina Martínez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Es brutal e, incluso, cruelmente honesto. No sabía que era una autobiografía hasta que terminé de leerlo, después de enterarme entiendo mejor que sea tan introspectivo. Sin embargo, me resulta un tanto cansino como juega a lo largo de todo el libro con la idea del odio a Roma dejando claro que en realidad al final acaba amándola, pero sin desarrollar esa idea en absoluto. Se puede hacer un poco repetitivo, pero son sus vivencias al final. Eso sí, las descripciones de las ciudades son realmente evocadores y te transportan a una época en la que Roma y París estaban vacías de turistas. Asimismo, el análisis de los personajes y sus comportamientos me ha parecido muy enternecedor, aunque con un punto amargo, como la vida misma, supongo.

[nate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this book made me realize something: while I love Aciman’s work as a novelist (having only read CMBYN before this), I don’t connect with him as deeply as a memoirist. This book is filled with personal, nostalgic stories, but strangely, they didn’t leave much of an impact on me. I kept waiting for that emotional pull, that lingering resonance, but it never quite came. Still, there were moments I genuinely enjoyed, flashes of his signature introspection that reminded me why I love his writing in the first place.

[sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

thank you to FSG & netgalley for an eARC to review!

this one wassss... a bit of a miss. the writing was very authentic but felt a bit dry to me. each chapter was too dragged on and it seemed as if aciman was trying to be poetic about his time in rome but it didn't hit the mark 🙃 i can see this being another readers cup of tea but unfortunately wasn't mine, if you're into very slow and detailed memoirs this would be a good read for you!

[Viktor · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story resonated deeply with me, as Andre narrates a period of his life that mirrors my own experience of being a refugee in a foreign country. Naturally, the hardships of life and your status in such a place leave a mark on your impressions of the new environment you find yourself in, and consequently, on your desire to stay there. The author captures this vividly in his memories. He didn’t love his life in Rome, and therefore, he didn’t love Rome itself. But when you learn to broaden your perspective and discover beauty where you couldn’t see it before, your perception begins to change. Later, it was a trip to Paris that unconsciously taught the author this lesson.
Sounds, scents, images... this novel is brimming with various details that Andre masterfully conveys in his memories, describing the time and place he once lived in, and this truly captivates the reader.

[Stephen the Bookworm · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Writing is intended to dig out the fault lines where truth and dissembling shift places. Or is meant to bury them even deeper?"

André Aciman came to global attention through the success of his novel Call Me By Your Name and the subsequent sequel Find Me.

My Roman Year is an autobiographical account of one teenage year lived in Rome in 1967.

André, his parents, brother and other relatives are forced to leave Egypt - with his mother and brother and a large number of suitcases they arrive in Italy to be 'housed' by great uncle Claude- whose pomposity and sleight of hand in character is continually hiding the truth of his own existence.

The family are housed in Via Clelia. A street in Aciman's teenage eyes is not one to be proud of- never revealing where he lives to fellow school pupils.

Aciman weaves a story of a young man who knows he is in a transitory location- never fully recognising how much he comes to love the city and often fighting to not fit in- a partial sense of snobbery is evident. Continually found with a book in his hand; with a love of Paris and a desire to live in New York and not fully connecting with the Romans he meets, Aciman feels slightly aloof . But the main joy of this book is the essence of the areas of Rome he visits, the people he meets who open their doors to him and also the relationship between his parents and their desires for him to succeed.

André Aciman's parents never wanted to be together and during the book live apart - it is their characters that bring the book alive; his mother's deafness and initial loneliness but efforts to make friends and be part of the local area and his father's dreams of success and love of the Arts that he shares with Aciman.

This is very much a book about those awkward years of exploration, finding yourself, experimentation with love and sex and trying to 'work out' who you might become.. It also permeates a sense of isolation and missed opportunities for the young Aciman

Beautifully written, comical in parts, fall of angst and love and ultimately with a view into a displaced family who find themselves in an unfamiliar city in an unfamiliar country and culture. The quest to find the love for his time in Rome would appear to have been a struggle for Aciman - did his writing enable a cathartic renaissance of hidden love for his time there to be uncovered? He questions this -This book would acknowledge that he did..

Although autobiographical ,this could easily be read as a novel of a young man who finds himself living briefly in 1960's Rome and the impact on him and his family

[Raro de Concurso · Rating 3 out of 5]

Desde que paseé en vespa por una Roma vacía en agosto de la mano de Nanni Moretti en "Caro diario" he deseado viajar de verdad a esa ciudad. Pero ahora sé o creo saber que no lo haré. No está en mis prioridades ir a un lugar tan gentrificado, masificado y que ha debido perder parte de su atractivo. A pesar de que sé que me voy a perder cosas maravillosas. No sé si me compensa.
El autor reflexiona, en última instancia, sobre este asunto. Cómo romantizamos los lugares y las situaciones, que diría su hermano. Porque Aciman, llega a Roma por obligación, expulsada su familia de su Egipto de adopción, con una mano delante y otra detrás. Vive de forma precaria con su madre y su hermano, en un barrio modesto, en un apartamento muy modesto. Y ahí surge la relación de amor odio con esa ciudad. Por una parte está deseando marcharse a París o Nueva York, y por otra, Roma le está pasando por encima de su vida, a los 17 años, y le va a dejar las marcas para siempre. Porque André descubre su ciudad, la que él romantiza, y sus amigos, amantes y familia son básicamente romanos. Él mismo ya habla como lo hacen en su barrio.
La decisión de marcharse de allí no es fácil, y una vez tomada, se siente un poco traidor. Le da vergüenza haberse ido casi de puntillas, sin atreverse a despedirse. Y pasados los años, cuando la visita ya en la madurez, todavía tiene cierto temor a encontrase con alguien de aquella época.

Aquí estamos en otra obra al más puro estilo Aciman: intimista y personal, pero con sentimientos universales que casi todos hemos sentido de una u otra manera alguna vez.

Y por hoy ya está bien, Che cosa vuoi che ti dica?

[Abby · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Much as I hated life on Via Clelia, being taken back there through the senses summons great joy, something I still don't understand but have grown to accept as one of the most pleasurable inlets to memory. As Virgil says, "A joy it will be one day, perhaps, to remember even this."”

I really loved this book, probably because I connect so closely to Aciman’s habit of romanticizing the world around him through the art he consumes, and his way of never living in the present, but always holding onto the past while trying to imagine some greater future. His writing perfectly captures the confusing yet comforting aspects of memory, dreams, and reality. (I was also a big fan of the nodd to CMBYN, whether intentional or not. “If not now, when?”)