The letter I received ten years ago was unsigned and bore no return address. Clearly its author did not expect, much less want, a reply. A message in a bottle, from no one to no one, that letter still remains the most bizarre form of communication. It asks nothing but to be read, promises nothing but to share a few facts and feelings, and, seeing that it must have been dashed off on a lined yellow sheet that seemed hastily torn out of a pad of paper, the author would not be surprised if, after skimming through it, the recipient decided to crumple and lob it into the closest dust bin.

Instead, I kept the letter. I kept it for ten years.

What moved me was not just its sobering matter-of-factness or its hint of downplayed sorrow, but the associations it provoked in my mind. It reminded me of those short, clipped messages to loved ones, written by people about to be shipped off to the death camps who knew they’d never be heard from again. There is a chilling immediacy about their hurriedly scribbled notes that say everything there is to say in the fewest possible words — there wasn’t enough time for more, no smarmy pieties, no hand-wringing, no treacly hugs and kisses before the tragic end. It also made me think of the moving phone messages left by those who finally realized they were not going to make it out alive from the Twin Towers and that only their family’s answering machine was going to take their call.

The letter is one page long. One page is enough. The handwriting is uneven, perhaps because the author had lost the habit of writing in longhand and preferred the keyboard. But his grammar is perfect. The man knew what he was doing. I assume he was writing the note by hand because he didn’t want traces of it on his laptop, or because he knew he was never going to send it as an email and risk a reply. Now that I think of it, he probably didn’t care if it even reached its recipient, a local Bay Area reporter who had mentioned my novel about two young men who fall in love one summer in Italy in the mid-1980s. The reporter eventually forwarded it to me, minus its envelope with the postmark. It took no time to see that all the author of the letter was looking for was a chance to blurt out the words he couldn’t dare breathe elsewhere.

My book had spoken to him. His letter spoke to me.

So here it is: dated April 16, 2008.

I came upon Mr. Aciman’s book while on a business trip back East. Not the type of book I am normally able to read, so I bought a copy for the flight home. I think I’m glad I did.

You see, I was Elio. I was 18 and my Oliver was 22. Though the time and place were different, the feelings were remarkably the same. From believing that you are the only person who has these feelings, to the whole “he loves me – he loves me not” scenario, Mr. Aciman got it right. I was particularly impressed with the attention he gave to the morning after Elio’s and Oliver’s first encounter. The guilt, the loathing, the fear. I felt it too much. I had to put the book down for a while.

But in the end I was able to finish the book before we landed at SFO. Which was good, because I couldn’t take the book home. Unlike Elio it was I who married and had children. My Oliver died from AIDS in 1995. I’m still living a parallel life. My name is not important. His name was Dwight.