Fiction, 2021
I love it when my academic reading aligns with my personal reading. It happened last week when I was learning about cases tried in the International Court of Justice for my class on peace in post-conflict societies. Simultaneously, I was falling deeper into the world of Intimacies, where our protagonist works as a translator for a war criminal in The Hague. The story is simple enough, with three main threads that we follow: her job as a translator, her relationship with a married man, and a “random” act of violence outside her friend’s house. The threads don’t intertwine, nor do they entangle. Instead, they lie suspended alongside the character’s mind, and an occasional breeze shifts her focus from one to the next.
This is a novel that is true to the title. Not a page goes by where an intimacy isn’t displayed, dissected, and remembered. I was talking to my roommate about small acts of closeness that we see around us that always make us feel a little sad. Like being busy and tired while watching someone else rest their head on a partner’s shoulder, or hearing someone talk about another person’s beautiful smile. These are moments of contradiction and tension. There is the voyeurism of watching, but the intimacy of seeing something reveal itself. The book is full of this—it talks about our connection with art, the tenderness of seeing an event turn into a memory, and the discomfort of watching your best friend get along a little too well with your boyfriend.
I wish I could read Intimacies again. If I did, I would move through it slower—pause between sentences, adjust my blanket for a little too long, and dim the lights. Once I finished, I felt the need to take a long walk and observe everything around me. If you do the same, linger outside until the moment feels singularly intimate.
Song - I’d Like To Walk Around In Your Mind
Film - Judgement at Nuremberg
P.S. I’m sorry for the lack of a newsletter last week. I think we should all accept by now that I am allowed to take weeks off without any explanation.
Okay so when I read Intimacies, I for some reason got in my head there would be a gone girl twist. I kept waiting for the reveal that she killed her husband. I don't know where that came from.
Will check it out. Your review made me think of the novel where the narrator watches the couple in the coffee shop/restaurant and then the next time one of the couple is missing….obviously a vague memory…maybe it was a mystery?