Customer Reviews

Intimacy

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I can still so clearly remember the afternoon I first read the Hanif Kureishi story that became INTIMACY---in the New Yorker in 1997 or 1998---and how I was so elated by it that I phoned an editor friend in another city who, like me, was a single mother whose children were officially grown up (but still trying to grow up) just as we were two women who were officially grown up (but still trying to grow up) and although we both belonged to a category of readers who should despise this book (women who've sometimes had a rough time in their relationships with sexually charismatic men) we just couldn't stop talking about it and singing its praises. But we didn't have to want a man like this in our lives (not any more, we didn't) to value that kind of man's incarnation as a character in an extraordinary novel.

It's true that when INTIMACY was first published in Britain, it ignited a firestorm in both Kureishi's family and in the press, with one of its many critics denouncing it as "this short, odious book." And it's also true that INTIMACY'S narrator, Jay (a scriptwriter) is wilful, childish, narcissistic and wild. And, yes, odious too; he even does the occasional parent-teacher interview in his "latest favourite suit, on acid" and even though he's the father of very young children he keeps Ecstasy, LSD, and an old bottle of amyl nitrate in the fridge. But he's also a man who is tender, introspective, witty, and exuberantly honest. Herein lies the book's reckless charm and elating momentum.

INTIMACY also joins a long line of 20th-century novels that tell the story of men leaving home, beginning with the husband in John Updike's Too Far to Go, a man who, before leaving his wife and children, repairs hinges and latches: "a Houdini making things snug before his escape..."

In novels by Richard Stern and Bernard Malamud and any number of other male writers on the theme of men who are also ambivalently on the run, the women being left behind are dark-haired, enduring, and sexually withholding, while the mistresses are fair-haired, adoring, and quick to offer sexual comfort. These blondes travel with a vast array of cosmetic and herbal supplies; in the case of Jay's mistress Nina--a shrewdly wistful phantom forever kept off-stage in her pale, hippie clothes--it's a bag stocked with nipple cream, tapes of the sound of the sea, postcards of cats, packets of camomile tea, and other bits of the equipment so vital to "mobile girls."

"Soon we will be like strangers," Jay tells us, speaking of Susan, the mother of his children. But no, they can never be that. "Hurting someone is an act of reluctant intimacy. We will be dangerous acquaintances with a history." Jay also fears dying--he's invited to more funerals than dinner parties--and so has little use for women who are also too quickly growing older, as he makes clear when he ironically asks what's wrong with maturity. "Think of the conversations I could have--about literature and bitterness--with a forty-year-old!"

Susan belongs in this age range, but in spite of his making her his muse by turning her (via metaphor) into a blank page--she's at the bottom of the stairs in her white T-shirt and white slippers, looking "so white I could write on her"--his evocations of her can also convey his love for her, as in the following scene when he's moved by her enthusiasm as she kisses their children: "When we really talk, it is about them, something they have said or done, as if they are a passion no one else can share or understand."

During his last night with his family, Jay experiences the outside world as both ominous and alluring. But mostly ominous: "Outside, the dark leaves on the trees flap in the wind like hundreds of long green tongues, the branches knocking at me." He dreads leaving his sons, two "fierce and ebullient" little boys who are never named--this is one of Kureishi's many brilliant strokes--two wild boys who careen through the novel, adding to both its anguish and its comedy.

Jay says of the three-year-old, "I wonder when I will sleep beside him again, if ever. He has a vicious kick and a tendency, at unexpected moments, to vomit in my hair. But he can pat and stroke my face like a lover. His affectionate words and little voice are God's breath to me." This has a parent's narcissism in it, true, but it's also incredibly tender. And yet in the incredibly skilfully abridged version of INTIMACY that appeared in The New Yorker, a few lines down from this adoring tribute Jay is on the threshold of his front door, the fresh wind sweeping through him as one of the more compelling of his inner voices commands, "Go. You must go."

This is where the novel should have ended, on page 92. It would have been a novella then, but it would have been the right thing to keep it emotionally and lyrically dynamic. Instead it goes on for another twenty-six pages, and the line that follows the powerful "Go. You must go," is almost criminally banal: "I am kicking over the traces." Along with a few other lacklustre passages, this is one of the relatively few disappointments in what is otherwise a vivid and fearless novel.

At times it's also as if the war between Jay's id and his superego has triggered a war in the syntax, which is sometimes formal and Victorian, sometimes the Kiplingesque English of Jay's father, sometimes London street slang.

But whatever its deficiencies, INTIMACY is an important and weirdly thrilling book, reminding us (as we occasionally do need reminding) how honourable that OTHER war is: the war between what's most worthy and what's most alive.

This is a superbly written book, which portrays the thoughts and feelings of a middle-aged man who has exhausted his 10 year relationship with his wife.

Anyone who reads this book for the explicit purpose of searching for answers in their own troubled relationships is not going to hit upon any big revelation or come to a closure of some sort.

While this book may open some people's eyes as to "what men really want" (in my opinion, many women may feel the same way as the protagonist in the story), it is more importantly a tale on the condition of human nature. What everyone should realize is that human nature forever desires what it cannot have, and no person who lets his/her mind run amok like this will ever truly find "ideal" happiness. A person's life is not made up entirely of long stretches of happiness; in times of boredom and listlessness, one should realize and value what he/she possesses and be content with it. A good marriage is not defined by love alone; there is trust, responsibility and all those other un-exciting descriptions that must be there for two people to co-exist peacefully. We all desire to be loved and understood, but in the end, every man dies alone. Happiness is internal and understanding yourself is the hardest thing of all!

Not exactly the happiest book I've ever read but certainly one of the best examples of dealing with separation. The chronicle of the slow demise of Jay's love for his lover cuts deeply into the heart strings because anyone who has been in a long term relationship can recognise and understand exactly what he is thinking. Torn between the nedd to find personal fulfillment or duty he opts for the personal fulfillment whilst many of us though wanting that, spend our lives on the duty side because we cannot bear the emotional strength it would take to leave He loves his sons dearly and is a good father but cannot stay because he can no longer bear to be shackled to a relationship with his partner in which he feels there is no longer even tolerance let alone love. It is a situation which he feels is robbing him of his very self and he opts to leave without a warning. The slow realisation that he maybe never loved her and never felt passion for her has left him exhausted and with an unbearable guilt and sadness that so much time has been wasted. Despite this he still manages to throw a selfish streak into it by admitting his passion for other women etc which does at least make you see him as not completely without fault. All in all it is an overwhelming book which pulls on your very emotional core just because it is so bitingly real. A must read for anyone who has gone through a break up without really understanding the reason why their partner left.

Kureishi writes with greater openness and depth about the real nature of intimacy than anything I read in 38 years of marriage. His novel describes the midlife crisis of a successful but restless intellectual who lives with the bright and efficient working mother of their two young sons. The enigmatically ending story is dramatically framed as the narrator's reflections, ruminations, and events during the last night before his hypothetical escape from this relationship. With keen sensibility and deeply penetrating awareness, Kureishi illuminates the seemingly meager joys and strangling frustrations of family life. He writes unabashedly about: the erratic sex life of friends and lovers; joint therapist visits; his prostate worries; hope for affection; ageing masturbation response; the sullen domestic atmosphere; love as a precondition of human flourishing; his parents' mutual loyalty; modern free-market Thatcherism of the soul; love and women's bodies as the male center of everything; et cetera. Other than an elaboration of his exact financial condition, nothing is missing. Since this brief 30,000-word account is so fascinatingly true at its core and only slightly exaggerated in its particulars, I highlighted, underlined, annotated, and reread it several times. With often hilarious detail, Kureishi's genius provides in passing more profound insights into the endless struggle for love than any of the PhD-written manuals of theoretical marriage advice.

Hanif Kureishi is one of the best playwrites/novelists writing in English today, and "Itimacy" is one of his finest works. It is the kind of novel that you cannot put down, not because the plot is so exciting, but because he offers such insight. Warning: this book is--for some unknown reason--deeply upsetting. You seem to travel so deep into the mind of the narrator, who seems a lot like Kureishi himself, that escape is futile. This book will control your emotions for days after you've finished it.

"Intimacy" is rightly valued for its dispassionate presentation of the duplicity and selfishness of men in love. Intimacy is both the goal and destroyer of monogamy, Kureishi seems to being saying, and he certainly pulls no punches when it comes to explaining why. Men always want someone else. Blame nature, blame nurture, blame contemporary social demands incompatible with six hundred millennia of evolutionary development. Whatever the case, we seem to be programmed to break women's hearts and to ruin our own happiness in the process. Kureishi gives an agonizingly candid insight into the machinations of male ego and self-justification. My problem with it is that many happily married men would probably say, "Speak for yourself, Hanif." And rightly so. What of the men who live perfectly happy lives devoted to their wives and children? It doesn't mean they aren't attracted to other women, it doesn't mean they don't ever think of straying. It just means they don't go through with it. Are they all repressed? Are they all kidding themselves? Do they secretly hate their wives and resent their children? Or have they learned that the infantile fantasy of endlessly variable sexual experience is precisely that, and therefore not worth pursuing? Kureishi doesn't seem to allow that such men might exist. He tells only half the story on men, and so this tragi-comic articulation of male infidelity comes very close to celebrating it as natural, inevitable and therefore of little consequence. I'm not taking the moral high ground here. I'm just acknowledging what Kureishi refuses to: that some men aren't cheating dogs. My only other quibble is that this novel is too long, even at 120 pages. It wouldn't seem that way if I hadn't previously read an exquisitely edited extract, published as a short story in The New Yorker, which said everything the novel says, but better. It was less totalizing, less cockily assured of its own position - and therefore closer to the truth. (It's still available in "The Art Of The Story", edited by Daniel Halpern - a collection well worth a look.)

Kureishi calls this "Intimacy, A Novel" but it is really hard to believe that you aren't reading his most personal thoughts. The narrator is a writer, living in London, who has been nominated for an Academy Award. Kureishi too is all this. He tells of his decision to leave his wife and family for a variety of reasons, but which really all end up with his inability to accept the limitations of a permanent relationship and a family. Most of the time you want to grab him by the lapels and tell him to grow up...but part of the time you know exactly what is going through his mind. Kureishi doesn't pull any punches here, and he reveals more than enough warts on his character for us to dismiss him as nothing more than a selfish lout. But few selfish louts have the skill and courage to bare their souls so completely.

At first impression this story may appear banal and self-centered, however it is really a rich network of ideas interwoven with self-betrayal, passion, exile and abject realism. Kureishi manages to swirl you around with images from your own life so much that you may find it difficult to stop reading this passionate tale of dark inner truths. You will feel for the main protagonist, be able to relate to his insecurities, be shocked by his behaviour and resent him, sometimes all in one go. This is one of my favourite Kureishi books. I would encourage you to read it if you've ever been in love, ever been fed up with your life circumstances, ever not wanted to go to work or ever dreamt of living on a beach and escaping it all.

"Without love, most of life remains concealed. Nothing is as fascinating as love, unfortunately."

There is a bitter irony in the choice of "intimacy" as the title of this short novel. Intimacy is what love inevitably brings about, and intimacy is what ultimately stifles love for Jay, the narrator of Kureishi's third novel. It has been called a hate letter to the author's former partner and mother of twins, and drew fierce criticism for its self-centered brooding and lack of self-awareness. True, it is not a work which grows from the kind of wisdom that looks for the golden mean. But it is a very entertaining and, despite its serious subject, surprisingly funny book about the one human passion that defies all common sense: romantic love. In Jay's definition, love is nourished by beauty, mystery, pleasure, novelty - in one word: impermanence. Jay defends his idea of the ideal love against the morality of the majority, and it takes a sense of humor and some tolerance on the part of the reader to enjoy his way of thinking. In his very own peculiar way, Jay is in pursuit of happiness. He wants to live life to the fullest, but always remains on the verge of failure because his ideal of love is so elusive.

For those who have read all of H.Kureishi's work "Intimacy" has almost nothing to do with his previous books.There are 5 characters and no more than 200 pages.And there is also little action. Right from the first page to the very last one ( which is capital to the novel) the narrator shares his life and most of all, his lies. Who does the narrator really love ? What are his real motivations? Hanif Kureishi "hurts" the right chord right till the end where the book takes another color, another story. To writers "Intimacy" is one of the best example available on the craft of writing. To all this book is an experience not to miss.