Intimacy

Hanif Kureishi

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9780571268061
• Edition: 0

'It is the saddest night, for I am leaving and not coming back.'

Jay is leaving his partner and their two sons. As the long night before his departure unfolds he remembers the ups and downs of his relationship with Susan. In an unforgettable, and often pitiless, reflection of their time together he analyses the agonies and the joys of trying to make a life with another person.

Table of contents

• Cover
• By the Same Author
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• It is the saddest night
• She talks of how her work colleagues have let her down
• The boys have fallen asleep
• From the beginning 
• My young gay friend Ian
• Susan has already laid the table
• I force myself to eat
• This is not my first flight
• After we have cleared up
• If only I could see her face again
• For Aristotle the aim of life is ‘successful activity’
• After a certain age there are only certain people
• You sat back in your chair
• The comfortable chairs
• What puzzles me more than anything?
• One makes mistakes
• I like walking to school at lunch-time
• I am still standing upright
• Fuck it, I will leave everything here
• I run my hand down the CDs
• Separation wouldn’t have occurred
• Victor and I were in our favourite bar
• Come on. Forward.
• My children hunt through their toy boxes
• I asked Nina to marry me
• You pick up other people’s feelings
• Not only does Susan work until seven
• Victor’s flat is in a fashionable, bohemian part of town
• I turn out the lights and find myself climbing the stairs
• How Nina tantalizes
• When did the realization really happen? 
• I have wavered
• For a year Nina visited me every two or three weeks
• Could I have done more with Susan?
• Susan and I cannot make one another happy
• A few weeks before this 
• These days I think often of the couples I know
• I know love is dark work
• It is beguiling how, in good relationships 
• I can’t have been at my best
• After my morning coffee
• I shove her a little, roughly
• How rarely are we really disillusioned!
• I don’t want to wonder who Nina is with tonight
• How weak the arc of my urine is
• I drop Susan’s pants into the basket
• From the darkness of the hall
• When I leave I want her to vanish too
• Holding the back of his head with one hand
• You could go into the dark
• Once, coming home at four
• Susan must have been watching me
• I liked taking Nina to restaurants
• Asif was marking papers
• Victor says, ‘It was the worst
• ‘What’s the matter? Are they sick? Are they awake?’
• Lying I don’t recommend
• Tonight the streets smell of urine
• Outside the bar there are dudes in knee–length thick coats
• Victor was always kissing Nina
• ‘I went to a bar for a drink
• Having not found Victor in the bar
• Susan sits down beside me
• What could be more dreadful than daylight?
• Without eating, drinking or thinking excessively
• I pick up my bag from the centre of the bedroom floor
• Victor is sitting at the table in his black dressing gown
• We walked together, lost in our own thoughts 
• About the Author
• Copyright