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Title: Packs an incredibly complex range of emotions into 118 pages
Review: The honesty and clear-eyed sensitivity of this book and of its narrator make it impossible to categorize it (or him) in a simple, judgemental fashion. Kureishi gives voice, tersely and unapologetically, to emotions, hopes and desires that anyone, male or female, has experienced when thinking about intimacy. The protagonist certainly seems to be representative of his time, negotiating all the beliefs and expectations of how to live life and find love in the 1990s, and yet the novel has a timeless feel to it; the narrator's struggles are similar to those of Newland Archer in Wharton's Age of Innocence. The only fault of this novel is that it occasionally slips into '90s platitudes, and the protagonist fits too exactly into the mould of New Labour.
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