Customer Reviews

Love in a Blue Time

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This is a small book of short stories, but for some reason it took me awhile to finish it. It was my third foray into Kureishi territory (The Black Album and the Buddha of Suburbia were first) and I have to say now, somewhat regrettably, that I'm hooked. I didn't, and don't, always enjoy reading his subject matter, but as an aspiring writer myself, his work continues to impress me. He is a talented literary artist, which is something that most average writers aspire to be. In this book, he writes in an economic style, and gives life to his stories with well told action, realistic dialogue, interesting conflicts and memorable characters. But the true strength of this book is in the passages, and in how emotion is communicated in an evocative, and often poetic way. His work often has a distinct dramatic and theatrical element, which could explain the multiple successes of his books' translations into plays and films. He rarely shies away from tough topics, and he indeed does have a special talent in exploring and explaining the depths of the human soul. He is able to tap into the minds and viewpoints of his many characters, and change the perspective of the story, which again is something that only the talented writer can manage successfully. I really like that his characters are always true to their character, and they never say or do anything that seems contradictory. In this book, I most enjoyed the stories "We're Not Jews", "D'Accord, Baby", and "The Flies". The latter is a morose and highly repulsive tale, but artfully done and very memorable nonetheless. I kind of look at these stories as "mood pieces", and I wouldn't recommend them to anyone looking for something light and cheery. But if you're in the market to explore some serious literary work, pick it up and maybe, like me, you'll be impressed.

For those (like me) familiar with Kureishi only via his film work, the stories here will not surprise, as they exhibit his usual sensitive approach to the themes of cross-cultural difficulties and men completely adrift in their middle-age. The ten stories--most in the 5-15 page range with three 40+ pagers mixed in--are fairly mixed in quality, there are a few failures, but what is good is exceedingly good. In the cross-cultural difficulties category are three workmanlike, but unremarkable stories: "We're Not Jews," "With Your Tongue Down My Throat," and "My Son the Fanatic." The latter offers an excellent example of how a somewhat offhand short story can be turned into a quite compelling and powerful film. The other seven stories all deal in one way or another with men struggling to come to terms with marriage, responsibility, commitment, and sheer growing up--or more often, not struggling but trying to simply avoid it all. Two of these, "The Flies" and "The Tale of the Turd" wander off into Gogolish territory to no great effect. Kureishi's writing is inarguably strong, and he's able to make his characters come alive with a minimum of words, and often with a fair dose of humor. But while it's fun to read the stories just to enjoy good writing, too many of these men start to feel like they're living under the same desperate cloud, which gets tiresome.

Kureishi's got this great gift to create amazingly fleshed out characters that we've all known or wanted to know, have been or wanted to be. Almost all of the stories are immensely readable--not because we want to know what will happen, but beacuse we want to know what the character thinks about what will happen. Not surprisingly, then, the weakest stories are those that abandon the first-person ("In a Blue Time" comes to mind). Kureishi soars when he lets us into the thoughts of his beautifully maladjusted characters. Plot and structure are of secondary consideration, which is just as well, since I'd buy the book if it simply contained character sketches.

Hanif Kureishi is a wonderful writer with the unique ability to touch on often serious topics as race, class and religion with unabashed humor. Love in a Blue Time is no exception. His social commentaries are expressed through well-developed characters, ranging from the highly ordinary to the very peculiar. "We are not Jews", "My Son the Fanatic" and "The Tale of the Turd" are arguably the the best short stories in this series and must-reads for fans of this gifted writer.

Hanif Kureishi is a gifted but sometimes very self-indulgent writer. He is especially good at writing about lost love-starved Brits. (Money in Kureishi's tales has much of the abstractness that money has for me. In contrast, drugs are something he knows!)

"The flies" is a failure attempting to write a Kafkaesque parable. Not just a failure, but unreadable. But I found "Nightlight" incisive as well as evocative. "My son the fanatic" and "D'accord, baby" are also splendid social comedies (not really so far from Austen, except in graphicness and being set in a multiracial England). The title story seems to me a London version of "True West" (without ties of blood). And "With your tongue stuck down my throat" is hilarious.

I was excited and refreshed to read the first(title)story in this collection. It was smart, hip, insightful and moved at a rate that was fun after slogging through a lot of modern "literary" fiction. Unfortunately the later stories in the collection were darker, slower and in the case of "Flies"-too self-consciously symbolic("The Turd" seemed too outrageous to take the symbolism seriously). As a guy in late middle age who has long since left drugged-out, lost friends it was refreshing to relive the hilarity, pain and eventual insanity of that wonderfully self-centered life-without-limits.

worse book I ever read in my life. None of the stories make any sense whatsoever. horrible Garbage put where it belonged in my trash barrel

Provocative stories.-Well written.-We can a understand some of the problems that the middle age couples have to face in a post tacherisim era in London.-Kureishi goes deep in a world of confussion, individualisim and lack of compromise.-

Few years ago I have read Kureishi's "Gabriels Gift". Friend of mine gave that book so much praise that I was quite disappointed when I finihes reading it. I have decided that Kureishi is not worthy of my time and I quickly forgotten him. Then, by a weird twist of fate, my hands grasped the copy of Buddha of Suburbia and somehow they couldn't put it down. I began to wonder was I too harsh first time? It seemed to me that there is a spark of brilliance laying hidden inside Kureishi. Problem was, where to find such brilliance.

So, upon some dull debate, I have decided to try with collection of short stories titled "Love in a blue time." Title had some kind of blurry notion, trace of saddnes wich lured me and I dived heedlessly into those pages. I have found quite a lot there, though not as much as I expected. Now that I think of it, "Love in a blue time" gives the reader rather good perspective over work of Hanif Kureishi. Variety of themes that trouble Kureishi are there, from conflicts with faterly figure to construction of identity in postcolonial world, struggles in small community of imigrants and wasted lives of small men that were overrun by time they in which they lived.

Kureishi writes with ellegance, sometimes though forgetting himself which results in suspicious sollutions of problems which are long way from being done in satisfatcoral way. Sometimes his characters are just plain stupid, and sometimes they bear entire weight of the world on their shoulders. But the best thing that I can say of this collection is that up to this day I sometimes feel urge to retunrn to it, and to read a passage or two that remained in my memory when need arise and "things are looking grey". I learned to value those books that have that kind of ability. Maybe I'm wrong, you should try for yourself.

He gives a voice to the outcasts, the forgotten, the neglected and makes us feel a part of their world.