Rick Morton

Is it Michelle?

Yeah, Michelle.

That's how you say it, I'm sure.

You can tell I was raised in Outback.

Well, exactly.

That's actually how I knew to pronounce it, Michelle.

Anyhow, and so now we're seeing, you know, this lust for an older man through a younger man's eyes, and this is Elio, and this is the start of this kind of another, as he calls them, they're not the, I can't remember the exact word he used, but there were people who kind of come and go in his life.

The occasionals.

The occasionals, that's right.

But he kind of has this inkling that Michelle might be more than an occasional, and we're kind of thrust back into a different world

way of looking at Elio mastering that restraint or whether he should pounce and take the opportunity and what should he do, because he just wants to hug this man and be held close to his chest.

And it's actually quite tantalising, I guess, in those early moments.

And I didn't know that when I finished it.

I wasn't sure.

And I didn't know if part of it was this kind of the toddler in me that wanted to be given what I wanted, which was Oliver and Elio for an entire book.

And God, you know, the sense of love, you know, the definition we all think love is, it's not about this kind of personal fulfilment.

It's about quest and daring and growth.

I think James Baldwin said that.

And that's what this book is to me.

It made me consider desire and passion through the mind of an older person.