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Intimacy [Paperback]

Hanif Kureishi (Author)
3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
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Book Description

Publication Date: 18 Jan 1999

'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.

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Product details

  • Paperback: 155 pages
  • Publisher: Faber and Faber; New Ed edition (18 Jan 1999)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0571195709
  • ISBN-13: 978-0571195701
  • Product Dimensions: 12.6 x 19.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 104,941 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Amazon 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

Book Description

An unsettling and emotionally charged look at the end of a relationship, from the acclaimed author of The Buddha of Suburbia. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars A powerful work. 8 May 2003
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
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.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Uncomfortable intimacies 26 Oct 2000
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
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.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars An Intense Book 1 Feb 1999
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
Kureshi's portrait of the end of a relationship is stunningly honest and engrossing. One can see why he can be accused of selfishness but such honesty makes for an uncomfortable and unsettling read. Thoroughly recommended
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars difficult to get in to
I personally could not get in to this plot. I found it totally boring. I wont be buying another book by Hanif Kureishi again, as i am not sure i would get in to another book by... Read more
Published 1 month ago by bookmoviefanatic
4.0 out of 5 stars Honest and brutal retelling of a relationship breakdown
Kept my interest throughout, short and economical so did not dwell on the sadness, but I felt a manly comradship in the emotions and difficulties presented in trying to be a a good... Read more
Published 3 months ago by DP
4.0 out of 5 stars compelling read
Storyline of a London first generation writer who is dissatisfied with life because instead of being young and carefree, he is married to a middle aged woman who is the mother of... Read more
Published 6 months ago by anna
1.0 out of 5 stars Priapic author gets his cock out
Straight from page one it is obvious where this book is going.

Double-spaced and written at arms' length from the protagonist; Intimacy is extremely self-indulgent and... Read more
Published 11 months ago by D. Smith
1.0 out of 5 stars Bad Present for an Abandoned Wife
A friend gave me this book shortly after my husband of twenty years had left me with four children. It didn't help.
Published 19 months ago by What I Think
4.0 out of 5 stars Honest
Controversial as it may be, as a woman today, one can also relate to the topic of this book. I found it refreshingly honest and a well-written read. Read more
Published 24 months ago by LivY
4.0 out of 5 stars Confession...
If I was a man, I'd be this man. There it is.
The protagonist is, as other reviewers have pointed out, honest to the point of pain, and portrayed by Kureishi as trapped within... Read more
Published on 12 Feb 2010 by Paperback writer
3.0 out of 5 stars Well-written, honest and convincing - and yet...
The front cover of this edition of Hanif Kureishi's "Intimacy" proclaims that the book is "controversial. Read more
Published on 28 Sep 2009 by unlikely_heroine
5.0 out of 5 stars Honesty and integrity if not sympathy
I loved this book.I am a 40 something now happily married guy and yet can sadly recognise some if not all of the musings and conflicts of Jay, and believe many others (and not just... Read more
Published on 30 April 2008 by Mr. Ian Gillibrand
4.0 out of 5 stars Poignant take on the break down of a relationship
My God ... midlife crisis and some. This novella shows the dark side of the male pysche in technicolour. Written in the first person ... Read more
Published on 3 Feb 2008 by Danny Bernardi
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