Product Description

A novel by the author of "The Buddha of Suburbia" and "My Beautiful Laundrette" which analyzes the agonies and joys of being connected to another person. Jay, who is leaving his partner and their two sons, reflects on the vicissitudes of his relationship with Susan.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #60055 in Books
• Published on: 1999-01-18
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Hanif Kureishi's latest novel made many reviewers uneasy on its first appearance, because it cuts so painfully near to the bone. If a novelist's first duty is to tell the truth, then Kureishi has done his duty with unflinching courage. Intimacy gives us the thoughts and memories of a middle-aged writer on the night before he walks out on his wife and two young sons, in favour of a younger woman. A very modern man, without political convictions or religious beliefs, he vaguely hopes to find fulfilment in sexual love. No-one is spared Kureishi's cold, penetrating gaze or lacerating pen. "She thinks she's feminist, but she's just bad- tempered," he says of his abandoned wife. A male friend advises him, "Marriage is a battle, a terrible journey, a season in hell and a reason for living."

At the heart of the novel is this terrible paradox: "You don't stop loving someone just because you hate them." Male readers will wince with recognition at the narrator's hatred of entrapment and domesticity, and his implacable urge towards freedom, escape, even loneliness. Female readers may find it a truly horrific revelation. Kureishi is only telling it like it is, in staccato sentences of pinpoint accuracy. By far the author's best yet: a brilliant, devastating work. --Christopher Hart

Customer Reviews

Uncomfortable intimacies
That INTIMACY observes the tragic unities of time and place is indicative of its ambition. Kureishi uses the end of a relationship not only to discuss the tension between sexual and domestic intimacy, but also to examine the intimacy shared by narrator and reader: ironically we are able to do for the taciturn Jay what no one can do for him in life - listen while "the inner storm of [his] intolerable thoughts blows itself out". Indeed, the novel's chief success is to force on us the complicity this intimacy brings with it. This is an exceptionally well written book. The restraint and elegance of Jay's voice is punctured only by his vulgar treatment of sex, which itself suggests that lust is his fatal flaw. The problem with INTIMACY, however, is that the protagonist is simply too cruel, too cowardly, and too vain for us to sympathize with his vacillation over whether or not he should abandon his children and their mother. This maybe because Kureishi intends us to focus on the internal 'tragedy' of Jay's existential isolation; but if this is the case, Jay's contemptible efforts to yoke his unhappiness to his generation's disillusionment ("If Marx had been our begetter...Freud was our new father, as we turned inwards") and to elevate his lust to the level of a philosophical tenet loom to large. The same is true of the supporting cast, given that it never develops beyond a projection of Jay's psyche. His lover Nina is a gently pornographic fantasy, his cohabitee Susan an emblem of uxorial "competence"; similarly, his freinds Asif and Victor merely exemplify his crudely polarized view of life as a choice between suburban incarceration and hedonistic abandon ("My kingdom for a come"). Because of this INTIMACY leaves you feeling numbed, rather than moved.

One of my all time favourites
This is indeed one of my all time favourites. I must say I enjoyed this as much as I enjoyed Proust, Woolf and Hemingway. It is the story of a man who plans to leave his wife, the next morning, and we follow his thoughts through that night. It is utterly frank and honest, and I believe based in true events of Kureishi's life. But this is not what makes it good. Kureishi here makes the break from the forms that have been holding him back for years. The structure of his novels Black Album and Buddha were very conventional and restricted, in my mind, a lot of his talent was cramped and repressed by these walls which he must have thought he needed to be contained in. But he has broken free. His short story work is formidable, and he finds, I think, in these short formats, the ability to express himself with the freedom and honesty of a true artist. The same goes for this short novel. It holds many truths and sublime observations, often simple and insouciant, yet always universal and human. This, I believe, will always be one of my favourite novels, and is, in fact, alongside one or two of Woolf's, my favourite English book. It is by far the best work of contemporary Britain, I think. There is no one around who has achieved this level of artistry, although most writers these days seem concerned only with commercial saleability or technical proficiency. This book is not a feel-good novel, so don;t buy it expecting that. And although it has a certain 'gravitas' about it, it really is a pure and direct form of artistic communication, and for this reason I reccomend it - it should touch a level of emotion reserved only for the greats, and will stay with you, as it did me.

A powerful work.
I think those reviewers who gave this book a low rating because it was introverted and pretentious are missing the point. It seems to me that the point of the book is not an objective critical examination, but a stream of conciousness work in which Kureishi communicates how he feels. I think it is a very brave work. He makes no effort to gain sympathy from the reader and he makes no apologies. His direction is one of 'this is the way I feel and that is all'. As for the pretention, well, as an aspiring writer myself I do not think it is pretentious at all. The complex emotions involved require complex writing. Kureishi is not afraid to do something different and aim for a style that he feels captures the tone of the novel best, and that is what is so important as a writer.