Midnight All Day: Amazon.co.uk: Hanif Kureishi: Books

Amazon.co.uk Review

Hanif Kureishi's previous book, Intimacy--an account of the writer's abandonment of his marriage--divided critical opinion violently, but the novel's unsparing honesty marked it as one of Kureishi's best works, with an excoriating, spiky cussedness that sidestepped the wheedling self-justifications of most "confessional" books. Midnight All Day, his new collection of short stories, continues his exploration of the irrational impulses of desire. Some of the protagonists here seem to be barely disguised avatars of the author, as if Kureishi had felt compelled to go over the earlier material obsessively, from different angles, through different voices: a prismatic opening up of the emotional complexity of Intimacy (the book is alluded to in the first story; elsewhere there are uneasy discussions about the ethics of writing). There is a clinical quality to his observations, an anatomisation born not of indifference but of fascinated curiosity at the perplexing disarray of human relationships, the shifts from desperate need to boredom, the uneasy fragility of the alliances that lovers make: "We are unerring in our choice of lovers, particularly when we require the wrong person. There is an instinct, magnet or aerial which seeks the unsuitable. The wrong person is, of course, right for something--to punish, bully or humiliate us, let us down, leave us for dead, or, worst of all , give us the impression that they are not inappropriate, but almost right, thus hanging us in love's limbo."

He perhaps shows in these stories that what he has always been interested in is the unfathomable pitch of sexuality-- ultimately idiosyncratic and endlessly fascinating, a chaotic accumulation of people's myriad specific needs, anxieties and desires.

Kureishi has moved away from the more obviously politicised terrain of earlier work, though elegiac glimpses of it surface occasionally, ruminations on the wake of idealism. If the long years of Thatcherism made a kind of political writing unavoidable, the 90s has seen a shift of focus to the landscape within, to what we are as men or women. This selfishness stems from a recognition of the inability ever to know the other. ("If falling in lov e could only be a glimpse of the other, who was the passion really directed at?") What remains is the search for gratification and the scrutiny of one's own impulses, an alternation between compulsion and a need for freedom.

The final story, "The Penis", is an unsubtle reworking of Gogol's "The Nose". It is as if, after all the analysis, Kureishi is despairing of ever reaching a better understanding of love: all that's left is one man and his dick, in uneasy alliance. --Burhan Tufail

Amazon.co.uk Review

Hanif Kureishi's previous book, Intimacy--an account of the writer's abandonment of his marriage--divided critical opinion violently, but the novel's unsparing honesty marked it as one of Kureishi's best works, with an excoriating, spiky cussedness that sidestepped the wheedling self-justifications of most "confessional" books. Midnight All Day, his new collection of short stories, continues his exploration of the irrational impulses of desire. Some of the protagonists here seem to be barely disguised avatars of the author, as if Kureishi had felt compelled to go over the earlier material obsessively, from different angles, through different voices: a prismatic opening up of the emotional complexity of Intimacy (the book is alluded to in the first story; elsewhere there are uneasy discussions about the ethics of writing). There is a clinical quality to his observations, an anatomisation born not of indifference but of fascinated curiosity at the perplexing disarray of human relationships, the shifts from desperate need to boredom, the uneasy fragility of the alliances that lovers make: "We are unerring in our choice of lovers, particularly when we require the wrong person. There is an instinct, magnet or aerial which seeks the unsuitable. The wrong person is, of course, right for something--to punish, bully or humiliate us, let us down, leave us for dead, or, worst of all, give us the impression that they are not inappropriate, but almost right, thus hanging us in love's limbo."

Kureishi has moved away from the more obviously politicised terrain of earlier work, though elegiac glimpses of it surface occasionally, ruminations on the wake of idealism. If the long years of Thatcherism made a kind of political writing unavoidable, the 90s has seen a shift of focus to the landscape within, to what we are as men or women. This selfishness stems from a recognition of the inability ever to know the other. ("If falling in love could only be a glimpse of the other, who was the passion really directed at?") What remains is the search for gratification and the scrutiny of one's own impulses, an alternation between compulsion and a need for freedom.

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

loneliness and a feeling of isolation, but in a good way 5 Oct 2001

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

These stories seem to be all about the same feeling (apart from the last one) and you can't really put your finger on whether it's regret or something else. Particularly because can you feel regret for something that hasn't happened yet, but is about too? Very human, emotional in the sense that it shines through in actions and thought rather than the caracters being too aware of them.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

Some high points, and some lower 12 Jan 2008

By Philip Spires TOP 1000 REVIEWER

Midnight All Day is a collection of short stories by Hanif Kureishi, an author whose characters often approach the low life, usually without ever actually attaining it. These stories are of variable quality, ranging from excellent to rather mundane, though they are all eminently readable, well written and well constructed. Sometimes there's just a bit too much incestuous involvement with the media. There are just a few too many writers, actors, television and film people around. One can understand why the author might meet a number of such people, but repeated use of media settings does occasionally detract from his story telling.

Despite this criticism, the characters are acutely drawn and are utterly credible. They tend to stumble or shamble through their lives from one opportunity to the next mistake, initiating and terminating relationships. Despite their tendency to write about or enact other characters, they often display very little facility for introspection. They often resort to their bottles or recreational drugs and treat sex as if it were a challenge.

So the stories deal with late twentieth century British professional middle classes, whose careers are always on top until they are bust, whose fortunes are always up until they crash, and whose relationships are always idyllic until they are failed.

Hanif Kureishi has a keen eye for the character of eighties and nineties Britain and on several occasions one feels implicitly that his subjects would not dream of discussing their woes with their parents. They are confident yet vulnerable, assertive yet indecisive, committed yet utterly ephemeral. There are occasions when these characteristics are a little overstated, but overall this is a moving and memorable collection which is probably best read one story at a time, rather than cover to cover.

Small details, large subject. 27 Dec 2007

By Beebarf VINE™ VOICE

A curiously dispassionate series of stories for ones concerned with passion, desire and human relationships, although (as always) excellently written and observed. I had to do a close reading of "Four Blue Chairs" from this volume for an assignment, and especially when looking at the symbolism of the objects mentioned, it really shows how carefully crafted the stories are, and how precise the language is. The level of detail is exquisite.