Intimacy by Hanif Kureishi

Having read only one book by him, Love in a blue time, I had begun to feel enthusiasm for Kureishi's work, and Intimacy happened to be the second choice.

The book is narrated by Jay, a middle-aged writer, who is about to leave his wife and two young sons and the whole book is a reflection of his struggling thoughts about his marriage, his affairs in-between and his love for his sons, in the last 24-hour before he simply takes his bag and leaves.

It is hard for me to have a comparative comment about this work as to other works by him, though the only one I have read other than this was a collection of stories and the style was almost like this one but with more striking moments where you suddenly became dazed. Rather than waking your senses up by modern soçiological analytic lines that would illuminate a whole new generation, such as 'I'm a professional businessman, not a professional Pakistani' in My Beautiful Laundrette*, throughout this one you are left aching, distressed and lonely in a way, along with Jay himself. It is an unbearably sad story and it is also interesting that Kureishi himself had left his wife and two young sons, prior to writing this book.

Intimacy is a hard feeling to establish and often the outcome of this trial is a feeling of entrapment if you are absorbed within you and your own selfish thoughts. And that is exactly how I perceive Jay.

There are mixed reviews about the book and I often came across rather negative ones such as Kenan Malik's;

Intimacy is a small book, and not just because it is but 118 pages long. Kureishi's is a circumscribed universe, claustrophobic and inward looking and lacking any larger vision.

however, for me, one terrible paradoxical line in the middle of the book, you don't stop loving someone just because you hate them, shows the whole confusion he is left with.



* Same line used in the movie version, where I got it.