Intimacy - Softcover

Kureishi, Hanif

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571195709 ISBN 13: 9780571195701

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 1999

Synopsis

'It is the saddest night, for I am leaving and not coming back.'

Jay is leaving his partner and their two sons. As the long night before his departure unfolds he remembers the ups and downs of his relationship with Susan. In an unforgettable, and often pitiless, reflection of their time together he analyses the agonies and the joys of trying to make a life with another person.

About this title

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

Review:

Kureishi is, simply, a wonderful writer, and Intimacy is a work of dark beauty. (Harper's Bazaar)

'It is by far the most astute and painful dissection of male sexual restlessness . . . The dialogue is shattering and there's a blunt refusal to compromise . . . Telling the truth is always a precarious business, but Kureishi does it with seriousness, tenderness and upsetting aplomb.' (Mail on Sunday)

'Kureishi has a rare and precious gift for character.' (Independent)

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0571195709
• ISBN 13: 9780571195701
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 155