Tuesday 8 October 2013

Intimacy by Hanif Kureishi

The perils of amazon shopping (you can buy a book in under 20 seconds, which is never good for a booklover's purse and TBR stacks) meant that I bought this book completely by mistake. I was meant to buy another title, The Impressionist, but my brain got muddled and this arrived on the doorstop.

Than a strange occurance arrived, I read a book I had bought within 2 weeks of it arriving rather than the usual 2 years!

Having a father who left, left again and then left again I was dubious about reading a book about a man leaving his wife and kids. Written for the apparently 'lost generation of men' who refrain from growing up and taking their responsibilities seriously. I read this wanting to stick my two fingers up to it, expecting to be angry, looking forward to criticising it.

Instead, I was presented with beuatifully written prose, a smart quick pace, tender moments of day-to-day family life which appear differently under the lens if you know they will never be experienced again. At 155 pages this snapshot of one evening held many years in its grip. Yes, he was an idiot man-child, but he expressed it beautifully.

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