The Ultimate Intimacy [Hardcover]

Ivan Klima (Author), A. G. Brain (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1998

To what should we devote our lives? Which is stronger, a faith without doubts or a faith that wrestles with doubts? With the brilliance and humanity that have made him a major figure in world literature, Ivan Klima in The Ultimate Intimacy explores the universal themes of love, adultery, and God.

Pastor Daniel Vedra has a wife and three children. He ministers to prisoners and is a sought-after commentator on the problems facing the rapidly changing society of the Czech Republic. But privately he struggles with the knowledge that he has never recaptured the depth of intimacy he had with his first wife, who died suddenly and young.

With the arrival of a beautiful married stranger who reminds him of his lost Jitka, Daniel finds his heart reawakening. But their affair will lead him to betray everything he has lived for: his family, his vocation, and his future. In a Czech Republic in the throes of complete social and economic upheaval, the order that had underpinned Daniel's life falls apart, his intimacy with God splintered by what he has found with another man's wife.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

It's easy to tease out the serious themes in Ivan Klima's novel of ideas--religious belief vs. earthly love; freedom vs. responsibility; skepticism vs. belief; and the burdens of the Communist past vs. those of the capitalist present. But The Ultimate Intimacy is far more than a metaphysical point/counterpoint. Klima's exploration of one crucial year in the life of a good minister, who discovers that truth and passion can be all too distant, is no simple construction. Born in 1944 and having grown up in Czechoslovakia in a time "when hate was publicly proclaimed as something necessary," and now living in an era in which "having a good memory tends to be a disadvantage," Daniel Vedra is determined to live according to the Biblical certainties he proclaims. Alas, at a particularly low point following his mother's death he is distracted by a mysterious (and beautiful) churchgoer, and the two are soon entangled. In lesser hands the situation might be incredible or, at best, credible but hackneyed. In Klima's complex narration, however, Daniel's crisis becomes a powerful drama of faith and, perhaps, salvation.

From Library Journal

Czech pastor Daniel Vedra preaches God's limitless love and demonstrates it through ministering to his congregation, community, and family. His staid and predictable life changes when a female visitor who reminds the pastor of his first wife begins attending, though she has little faith in God. She is looking for shelter from her possessive husband and a surrogate lover in Daniel. Though it is against everything he teaches, the couple begins a secret affair; ironically, as it continues, the woman draws closer spiritually while Daniel drifts away, contemplating the validity of Christ's teachings on love and fidelity. This is certainly not the first time the subject of forbidden love in this context has been addressed, but Klima goes deeper than most into the minds of the conspirators as they deceive their families and wrestle with their consciences. The vivid portraits of the families' lives through letters, diary entries, and everyday scenarios rival Updike's best prose, showing that the most important mechanics of love involve the mind much more than the body. Many people will recognize a bit of themselves in this sad but stunning and insightful book. Highly recommended.?Marc A. Kloszewski, Indiana Free Lib, Pa.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 387 pages
• Publisher: Grove Pr; First Edition edition (January 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802116256
• ISBN-13: 978-0802116253
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,768,309 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A powerful examination of ideas, December 4, 1999

By 

Dennis Hathaway (Los Angeles, California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Ultimate Intimacy (Paperback)

Klima deals in big ideas--the nature of love, morality, despair, religious belief--and he does so from a variety of perspectives, turning ideas this way and that, holding them up to different sorts of light so that their complexity can be fully appreciated. Third person narratives are blended with diary entries and letters written by different characters who are all distinct and move about in skillfully detailed settings. The story may be the most artful element of the novel; it is compelling, suspenseful, never predictable or hackneyed. I had a few minor quibbles about passages that seemed to go on too long, but as a whole the novel creates a genuine emotional and intellectual experience so powerful that it lives on long after the final page is reached.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Masterfully narrated tale of vows broken/boundaries crossed, May 16, 2000

By 

LarsLancejr "lan" (Minnetrista, Minnesota USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ultimate Intimacy (Paperback)

Where so many texts can only provide a cursory glace at an issue, four major thematic concerns are masterfully probelmatized in this novel. These are love, religion, politics and the family. The focus falls primarily upon a pastor and the ensuing amorous relationship he has with a woman who attends his service one day. What follows is an at time heart-wrneching history of a woman whose abusive huband leads her to feel lonely and incomplete and the relationship she has with the pastor. He (pastor)is married to his second wife, whose only shortcoming is that she will never equal his first wife.

Equal time is spent exploring the Pastor's ministry to a drug user/dealer and his search for his father who was abducted by the secret police years earlier. However, we are always anxiously waiting to to see what is going to happen between the Pastor and his mistress.

Of particular interest is one literary convetion employed by the author. That is, readers are invited to read the Pastor's diary as well the written correspondance between him and his lover as well as those between him and friends and family. These draw the reader into the inner thoughs of the protagonists, asisting the narrative voice in its duties.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars surprisingly readable for its subject, November 9, 2001

By 

Emilia Palaveeva "ema-in-seattle" (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Ultimate Intimacy (Paperback)

THis was the first book by Ivan Klima that I read and based on the back cover description I picked it with a little doubt--will it be one of those haughty books that try to explain the meaning of life, love and faith in a language that nobody can understand or care to. But it was not.

The novel is about a married pastor who falls in love with a married woman. Tormented by the deception he lives in, contrary to everything he has preached and believed in, he begins to question everything around him--his relationship with his family, his wife, his dead parents.

Through the eyes and words of the pastor, his wife and kids, his lover and her husband and other characters in the book, the reader is forced to think about some major issues: What is love? Are we always looking for an excuse to justify our not always perfect judgements? How do you adjust in a time when moral values in a society change (the novel takes place in the early nineties, when the Czech republic is on its painful way to recovery from communism and rediscovering itself)?

Yet, Klima manages to discuss all these issues and more in a very palpable way, without turning his book into a philosophical treaty. The characters of Dan (the pastor), Hana (his wife), Bara (the lover) and Samuel (the lover's domineering husband) are very well developed and portrayed with all their insecurities, doubts, emotions and loyalties.