"Nothing is as fascinating as love, unfortunately."
Jay, the narrator of Hanif Kureishi's third novel, tells his story on the night that he is preparing to leave his lover, Susan, and their two boys. His departure will not be impulsive: "I have contemplated this rupture from all sides," he says. But it will happen. He and Susan live comfortably in London. Each loves the children. Yet Jay, "lost in the middle of [his] life," craves and depends on passion in life, and it is no longer there.
Known for "very funny works about serious topics" (San Francisco Review of Books) and his uncanny ability to capture the mores of our time, Kureishi strips away all posturing and self-justification to expose the flaws of his own protagonist and the failure of intimacy. Searingly honest, he explores the fears and desires that drive a man to leave a woman. Rarely has such challenging and complex emotion fit into so compact a novel; rarely has an experience both common and uniquely devastating been so courageously portrayed.
...ContinuaSe stai vivendo la tristezza di una separazione non leggerlo. Se temi che il tuo compagno abbia un'altra storia, non leggerlo. Se hai due bambini che adorano il padre, e se il padre non adora te, non leggerlo. Se pensi che gli uomini debbano reprimere i loro istinti di "prosecuzione della specie" però con un'altra specie che non sei tu, non leggerlo. Se pero' vuoi guardare in faccia la realtà, convincerti che se è finita è finita, che non servono i sensi di colpa per salvare un rapporto, che è inutile cercare di cambiare, chè è utopistico "riprovarci" quando sono entrati nuovi "personaggi" nella storia, che fra soffrire per non tradire e tradire per non soffrire è meglio la seconda, allora leggi questo libro. Ti svelerà ciò che già è nella tua testa, ciò che pensi ma non reisci a mettere a fuoco, ciò che senti già nell'intimità.
...Continua"Tonight my predominant emotion is fear of the future. At least, one might say, it is better to fear things than to be bored by them, and life without love is a long boredom. I may be afraid but I am not cynical. I am trying to be resolute. Tonight, don't worry, I will set the record crooked.
I should, too, consider what it is I love about life and other people. Otherwise I will turn the future into a wasteland, eliminating possibility before anything can develop. It is easy to kill oneself off without dying. Unfortunately, to get to the future one has to live through the present."
[...]
"The world is made from our imagination; our eyes enliven it, as our hands give it shape. Wanting makes it thrive; meaning is what you put in it, not what you extract. You can only see what you are inclined to see, and no more. We have to make the new."
"Telling the truth [about a couple] is always a precarious business, but Kureishi does it with seriousness, tenderness and upsetting aplomb"
is easier sometimes to read that listening...
is it easier to write than to talk?
