Review #18 - Intimacy

Author: Hanif Kureishi

Rating: ★★★

You spend years making a family, trying to be the same with someone you fell in love with years ago, trying to make the marriage work, but all is futile, and one night, you decide that this will be your last. Or is it?

Jay decides to leave his partner Susan (please, bare in mind, that they’re not married) and his two sons, after several years of futile attempt at being in love with the happy family scenario and putting up with the monotonous life, to lead a more romantic sort of life, maybe to lead a life with Nina (who by the way, has been out of the picture for quite some time, which you only realise by some time into the book).

Is the book worth a read? Well, in my honest opinion, it’s got some great philosophies about love, life and family, which is quite undebatable. It should be kept in mind that stories of cheating, unhappiness in marital life or relationships almost always stems from either a history of disturbed lifestyle as a child (mostly due to parents) or something that broke off between the two partners. Or at least I think these are the two main reasons. I don’t claim to know it all. The language of the book is beautiful as well, as one would mostly expect a book based on the topic of a man leaving his long time partner in the fantasies of another woman to quite sexually explicit.

However, the negative I found in this book is of the double standards of the protagonist, Jay. I truly did feel for the man, his wife was absolutely nagging and what not. I also agree to the fact that not all human beings are meant for the family life, contrary to the popular belief of a lot of cultures in this world that seem to be instilling it into the society that marital and family life is the absolute bliss and ultimate aim. However, Jay had it in him to be a flirtatious and unfaithful guys from always, or so I felt from the way he narrated his story. He seemed to be living in two worlds at the same time, fickle minded in a lot of instances. Again, maybe that’s what the writer wished to convey about human personalities. Still, I couldn’t digest a man being this fickle minded, to the very end that too.

All in all, I would say it is a different genre of book to read, for me at least, and I found it, enlightening and insightful, about the flaws and thoughts of a human being and the different stressors in life that can make a man or woman either crazy about a person (in the good sense) or mad about a person. Like they say, the quality that is most attractive about a person, is the one that can drive you mad too. Or did I say that? Well, it is true in any case.

#fiction #contemporary