Samuel Perlman is the first narrator of the novel, the central protagonist of Part 1, “Tempo.” Samuel is a successful classics professor who lives in Italy. He is divorced with an adult son, Elio. Samuel is in an older stage of his life, in which he worries that he has lost the chance to be irrationally in love with someone who truly understands him. Though he had a good marriage, it wasn’t the great love of his life. In fact, he let the great love go, choosing to end their affair and marry his girlfriend, a choice that still haunts him. Now that he is single, he worries that that part of his life is over—until he meets Miranda. At first, Samuel is hyperaware of his age in comparison to Miranda’s, self-conscious about seeming like a creepy old man hitting on a younger woman. Their natural chemistry and immediate intimacy spurs Samuel to accept her invitation to spend more time together, and over the course of their day, he learns to embrace the beauty of the moment. Until this point, Samuel’s interior life has been characterized by a compulsion to over examine his past choices to evaluate where his life has ended up and how it could have been better.