Paul and Catherine feel far less embodied than Elio and Oliver. Their sexual encounters are largely sublimated, left in the blank spaces between sections ... Many of the descriptions are perfunctory: the clothes they wear, the food they eat. We are frequently told how charmed they are by each other, an attraction Aciman asks us to take at face value ... Still, one suspects that Aciman knows what he is doing. Transfer Room on the Sea to the screen, cast Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci in the lead roles, and the lack of layered interiority will become less important. And the central question of whether the lovers go to Naples together might have higher stakes.
It’s another of Aciman’s what-if narratives of literate maybe-maybe-not lovers and something of an advert for the charms of New York’s eateries ... A barista called Pirro sweet talks them and the sun continues to shine. This amiable romcom waltz of words—partly innocent, partly conspiratorial—is amusing in a gentle way ... But the tempo increases at an unrealistic pace ... Meanwhile, their partners remain offstage, little more than vague disappointments that justify the courtroom courtship ... Aciman strums his usual chords ... Italy, here seen from both a physical and biographical distance, is outrageously romanticised ... He also delivers more of his stock characters: well-heeled but emotionally and sexually unfulfilled liberal arts graduates, their ennui cushioned by holiday homes, academic tenure and tailored outfits. This can make them hard to like. Paul and Catherine, both in late middle age, have none of the usual indignities of that stage of life ... Room on the Sea is a fantasy within a fantasy—an unlikely last-chance liaison underpinned by daydreams of the Mediterranean—with multiple levels of wishful thinking that might have been insufferable if it weren’t for Aciman’s ability to produce witty and memorable moments ... One can enjoy this short tale rather like one enjoys cannoli: not nourishing perhaps, but certainly moreish.
