Katie KitamuraRezensionen

I expected more to happen in this book. Which is my fault, not the book’s. Which is the marketing’s fault actually—psychological thriller? Not really.

It’s a smart book about how much we can know about one another, about how much we can connect to one another, the lies we tell ourselves and others in order to connect and in order to remain apart, free. The book’s intelligence comes from the juxtaposition of the MC’s love life and her professional life as a translator for crimes against humanity legal proceedings at The Hague. Her empathy gets all scrambled in her work …and maybe in her love life. Women in particular are wired to connect, to relate deeply…and it can make the world confusing and dangerous.

So smart. A smart book. But the relationship at the heart of the novel is boring? And even though she knows she’s pathetic, she’s still pathetic?

No. That’s not it. I have no beef with women who knowingly make bad romantic choices…I just don’t really like the main character. She’s dull. That’s the thing. That’s the thing. Smart book, dull MC.

The NYT review says, “ Though the words “emotional labor,” “feminism” and “colonialism” never appear, it is still deeply engaged with these grand social issues, while it also makes subtle comments on everything from art to jealousy to gentrification.” And it’s true.

This is a smart book. I don’t think the novel agrees with the MC’s choice at the end. I don’t think it disagrees. I think the novel is wise: given our wiring to attach and connect and bond in a dangerous world, we do the best we can.

I just wish the MC had a little more zest.

[b:Intimacies|55918474|Intimacies|Katie Kitamura|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1605570704l/55918474._SX50_.jpg|87129689] is narrated by an interpreter working in the Court at The Hague. She tells us more of the back stories of her friends and lover than her somewhat mysterious self and the "strange intimacy" of her encounter with the accused former president of an unnamed African country in his cell or in the conference room with his lawyers. She translates from the French not his native Arabic, but he "sees" her in a way that frightens her as she ponders the power of language.
Another compelling thread of the book is her lover, Adriaan, who leaves her alone in his apartment for weeks while he goes to resolve his divorce with his wife in Lisbon. When will he return, or will he? Troubled by the adulterous affair of her friend Eline's bookseller brother who she espies in a restaurant, our unnamed heroine is uncertain of her own affair. She also questions her affinities with other people recently met in her move to Holland.
The book is well written in spare language and readable in short eventful chapters. I gobbled it up even though not entirely at ease with the ending.
Read Ron Charles review: https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/katie-kitamura-intimacies-boo...

Jenny Offill blurbed that this was a "slow burn of a novel." A little too slow. I found it once removed (like a long ago cousin) from my reading attention. The charred landscape set in Mani, Greece reflects the passive narrator's many thoughts and ponderings. There is a murder but it is more psychological journey than mystery. The plot is unsatisfactory but the writing is admirable. Trying to figure out what the narrator wants in the morass of reflection left me wondering why I care, but it was the skilled writing which saw me through.

"Intimidades’, mujer en busca de un hogar imposible", JM Guelbenzu, El País 25.02.2024: https://elpais.com/babelia/2023-02-25/intimidades-un-lugar-donde-empezar-algo.ht...

I like that Kitamura seems to tell us how to interpret this novel in the title she gives it. Granted, it’s not an always foolproof measure (the first blurb on the back of the hardcover states confidently that it is “a novel about the ruthlessness of power…”, which, no its not) but I think here it accurately lets the reader know that the novelist’s primary concern in the work is to do with intimacy and intimacies.

When you think of “intimacy” a relationship with physical geography probably isn’t what first springs to mind, though given how basic and integral the idea of “home” is to identity for many of us, I can see it being a base for other intimacies. The novel begins with this intimacy - our narrator has left New York, where her immigrant family had lived and which she lacked a connection with - and moved to The Hague, where she wonders “if I could be more than a visitor here.” Unaware of it, a late reveal shows that she has an early and intimate connection with the city, which subconsciously may have helped direct her there, early roots producing a shoot.

Interpersonal intimacies are presented in varying forms. Friendship and romantic love, of course, are craved by almost all of us, including the narrator. These pass by mostly uninterestingly in my reading here. Sometimes you accidentally become party to a stranger’s as you go about town on your own business: “On occasion, I found myself stumbling into situations more intimate than I would have liked…”

More interesting is the presentation of intentionally forced intimacy. A strong passage in the novel relates to Judith Leyster’s 1631 painting “Man Offering Money to a Young Woman”, in which there are two figures in a candlelit room, a man leaning down over a seated woman who is working on a handicraft and staring straight down, while he holds out money in one hand and pulls on her with the other. The intimate closeness he forces on her is most unwelcome. In parallel there is a man whose attentions towards the narrator are also trying to force an unwanted intimacy, and who has financial power over her.

Then most interestingly there is conflicted intimacy, compromising intimacy, that our narrator is led into through her work. Shades of grey are always the most interesting, eh? Working as a translator at the International Criminal Court she provides undoubtedly necessary and useful services in translating court and lawyer’s proceedings for defendants charged with murder on a statecraft scale. But by necessity providing services for one person brings you into a sort of intimate relationship with them. You are there for that one person’s benefit. Speaking to them. Even whispering quietly into their ear while seated next to them.

About halfway into the novel (unfortunately not sooner!) this mostly comes into play when the narrator becomes interpreter for an ex-President of an African nation charged with atrocities committed while trying to hang onto power:

I was close enough to observe the texture of his skin, the particularities of his features, I could smell the scent of the soap he must have used that morning.
[…]
I sometimes had the unpleasant sensation that of all the people in the room below, of all the people in the city itself, the former president was the person I knew best. In those moments, out of what I can only describe as an excess of imagination, he became the person whose perspective I occupied. I flinched when the proceedings seemed to go against him. I felt quiet relief when they moved in his direction. It was disquieting in the extreme, like being placed inside a body I had no desire to occupy. I was repulsed, to find myself so permeable.

“I was repulsed to find myself so permeable.” It’s a fascinating insight. How solid are our own selves, and how much altered could they be by the intimacies we inhabit, voluntarily or not, positive or not. I only wish the novel had spent much more time on this question, and cut out other parts of the novel, unmentioned here, that I don’t feel contribute much to it.

The character descriptions were kind of long to the point where I couldn't just breeze through the book. I like the idea and the topic was new to me.

Very nice. A very good book. Interesting subjects, moving depiction of a certain alienation and quiet search for belonging. A lovely ending that feels right. There can be no intimacy in a world committed to…the neutrality of professionalism.

A well written, tense narrative of a marriage. The bonds it created, the illusion and reality of those bonds. A woman well into a secret separation from her husband is forced into a different relationship with him when he dies suddenly. I kept feeling like something more was going to happen. Nothing did. It was interesting without being very philosophical, but it’s easy readability and sense of impending meaning made it hum along and then spin out the inherent meaninglessness of most things…

I received a copy from a Goodreads giveaway. A very good read. I loved the writing style. It's sometimes hypnotic and seems to reflect the disjointed feelings of the narrator. The story moves along slowly while the psychological tension builds and there are some keen observations of men/women/marriage. I'd like to read her earlier books.

Good writing; but a weak story line; translator at the Hague; relationship with a married man who wouldn’t leave his family½

As much as I was uncomfortable with the authors writing style, I found the book difficult to put down. The narrator seemed to rambled on in her own head most of the time. The narrator seemed unconvinced by her own musings which had me doubting her observations and assumptions throughout much of the book.

The title "The Separation" is symbolic of the many events and situations in life where we might experience a separation. With birth, one is separated from a mother. In marriage there is a separation of families, such as with death or divorce. On the same note, that which separates also connects in an awkward fashion.

Ultimately, my patience was rewarded with a rather thought provoking ending. It is interesting how emotional ties can endure the many trials and tribulations in life.

Una joven se muda de Nueva York a La Haya para empezar a trabajar como intérprete en el Tribunal Penal Internacional. La plenitud que le procura su nueva vida –una estimulante red de conocidos y amigos, un buen empleo, una incipiente historia de amor– le hace sentir que tal vez ha encontrado, como anhelaba, un lugar al que llamar hogar. Sin embargo, ese bienestar pronto comienza a resquebrajarse. Adriaan, su amante, abandona unos días la ciudad para reunirse con su esposa y concluir los trámites del divorcio, y repentinamente deja de contestar sus llamadas. A la vez, la protagonista recibe el encargo de traducir durante un juicio a un exjefe de Estado de un país africano acusado de crímenes de guerra, lo que la obliga a hacer suya la voz del criminal y a establecer con él una suerte de complicidad que nunca hubiera deseado. Mujer introvertida y observadora, se esfuerza por descifrar lo que está ocurriendo a su alrededor, pero no encuentra más que incertidumbres. Lo que parecía ser un camino recto se ha convertido de pronto en un laberinto.

Hipnótica y de una rara intensidad emocional, Intimidades, cuarta novela de Katie Kitamura, muestra el indiscutible talento de la escritora estadounidense para desnudar lo familiar y revelar sus aspectos más desconcertantes. Una lectura adictiva que se cuestiona hasta qué punto llegamos a conocer y comprender verdaderamente las motivaciones de aquellos que nos rodean y que reflexiona sobre el modo en que las intimidades, escogidas o impuestas, condicionan el curso de nuestras vidas.

I managed to listen to the end of this extremely well written novel, but I have to say, at times it was like watching paint dry, a beautiful paint nevertheless.

It’s a story of a married couples separation and it takes place on a beautiful Greek island. Every characters is described minutely - their facial characteristics, their moods, their in-the-moment actions, imagined thoughts, the opposite of those imagined thoughts, their imagined future actions, their imagined motives nuanced to a literature nanosecond. All from the point of view if the wife, the narrator.

There is a mystery that kept me reading, but it was really the quality of the writing that saw me through to the end.

Honestly, it took me 10 minutes of listening time round about chapter 13, for one of the characters to walk from one room to the next.

Still it was a good read. The audio narrator’s voice had a softly eerie quality, but it was I think in her imagined spirit of the novel.

Overall a good read.

3.5⭐️ rounded up!

“The fact that our daily activity hinged on the repeated description—description, elaboration, and delineation—of matters that were, outside, generally subject to euphemism and elision.”

Our unnamed protagonist (who is also our narrator) has recently taken up a one-year contractual position as an interpreter with the International Criminal Court in The Hague, moving from New York to The Hague, and is still in the process of adjusting to her new life. She is professionally tasked with interpreting for the high profile case of a former West African President, who is being tried for horrific war crimes. Her interaction with the former President was not just limited to her removed presence behind a glass-fronted soundproof booth. She is also required to sit in and interpret for him during his private meetings with his legal counsel.

"The Court was run according to the suspension of disbelief: every person in the courtroom knew but also did not know that there was a great deal of artifice surrounding matters that were nonetheless predicated on authenticity."

On the personal front, she is involved with Adriaan, a married man separated from his wife, yet to be divorced. She also befriends Jana, a curator of an art gallery. Her personal relationships do not appear to be particularly stable, her friendship with Jana feels fragile and Adriaan seems conflicted over the future of his marriage. She also befriends an art history teacher whose brother was recently mugged in the vicinity of Jana’s apartment building but who does not divulge his reasons for being in that area. The novel follows our protagonist as she navigates her personal relationships and professional commitments all the while learning to fend for herself in a new city. The plot of the novel revolves around the varying degrees of intimacy in her professional and personal experiences and how they impact her as an individual and as a professional.

Katie Kitamura‘s Intimacies is a quiet novel, direct and lacking embellishment. The narration at times lacks a ‘personal component’ despite being narrated in the first person by our protagonist. I loved the scenes depicting the proceedings in the Court and found the detailed look into the responsibilities of the translators /interpreters very interesting. The tone of the novel feels so impersonal that I found it very difficult to feel any connection with the protagonist. The novel gives us a look into her personal life – romantic relationships and friendships, the superficial nature of all her personal relationships is very subtly portrayed. In fact, the only point in the novel where the protagonist shows any vulnerability is in the course of her work while interpreting for the former President on trial, a vulnerability that makes her uncomfortable with the very nature of her work.
“It was disquieting in the extreme, like being placed inside a body I had no desire to occupy. I was repulsed, to find myself so permeable.”

This is a unique novel with a very interesting setting and elegant prose but an unconventional plot structure. It is an interesting read, but I think many would find it hard to connect with the protagonist due to the dispassionate tone of the novel and in that it may not appeal to many readers.

"It is surprisingly easy to forget what you have witnessed, the horrifying image or the voice speaking the unspeakable, in order to exist in the world we must and we do forget, we live in a state of I know but I do not know."

The story was novel & interesting, and I learned some form this book, but I thought it was not particularly well-written. Also, the protagonist often - very often - did mind-reading, certain that she knew from the look in someone's eyes or a brief ambivalent facial gesture what some one was thinking and what her motives were. This was disappointing & intrusive, and could have been so much better authored. Nevertheless, I liked the book for the story and the new information (for me) the book contained.

Very character-driven, but also rather dry and detached.

Mah, sono perplessa. Il libro in sé non è male, si legge bene, però alla fine mi ha lasciata sconcertata perché sembra non voler arrivare a nessuna conclusione, in quanto resta tutto più meno o sospeso e poco chiaro, perché, se la volontà era scandagliare i sentimenti e il disorientamento della protagonista e quello che si nasconde nel suo animo, non mi sembra che questo obiettivo sia da considerarsi pienamente raggiunto. Scritto come fosse un dialogo interiore, a volte sembra quasi solo sfiorare le vicende che vedono la protagonista direttamente coinvolta e che, alla fine, risultano trattate in modo quasi marginale lasciando addosso un senso di incompiutezza e sospensione. Le insidie che possono nascondersi dietro le parole e la loro interpretazione nelle diverse lingue e di conseguenza le difficoltà che possono insorgere nel lavoro di un interprete era ciò che mi ha spinto alla lettura di questo libro e trovarle, poi, sposate all’ambiguità di certi personaggi mi ha coinvolto ancor più nella lettura, ma il brusco chiudersi della vicenda senza che sia data una seppur minima logica spiegazione mi ha lasciata insoddisfatta e distante. Una protagonista che non sono riuscita a capire appieno, che cerca una sua dimensione ma che sembra subire quasi passivamente gli eventi e le persone che la circondano quasi fosse in balia delle decisioni altrui. A differenza di quanto espresso da altri non mi sembra possa essere considerato un libro maturo, manca di una certa profondità e, soprattutto, di completezza. Molto buoni stile e scrittura che non mancano di quella fluidità che accompagnano comunque quella che considero nel complesso una buona lettura.
Effettive tre stelle e mezzo.½

I liked the subject and the writting style of this author. I thought the story and the goal of the main character was interesting and could have been elaborated. This felt like a short story and not a novel.

My issue wasn’t so much that nothing happened, it was that I didn’t really feel like I got much out of the majority of the novel. Even when nothing is happening, I feel like I should be learning things about the character and their relationships with people, but it was more just descriptions of interactions that didn’t contribute much to my overall scope of the situation.

Finished reading Katie Kitamura's Intimacies this morning. It was a beautifully written first person account of a woman who takes a job as a translator at The Hague. She has moved from her home in NYC, following the death of her father and her mother's return to Singapore. "It is never easy to move to a new country, but in truth I was happy to be away from New York. That city had become disorienting to me...I understood how much my parents had anchored me to this place none of us were from." As she begins a new job and gets acquainted with the city, she is introduced, through a mutual friend,to a woman named Jana who curates an art gallery. "She entered my life at a moment when I was more than usually susceptible to the promise of intimacy." While at her house for dinner, police sirens interrupt their conversation and we come to find out that Jana does not live in the best of areas. In fact a man is attacked that night and this too becomes part of the narrative. She also meets a man named Adriaan at a gallery party and they become a quick couple. At The Hague she learns quickly and becomes involved in a big, newsworthy trial against a former President of a West African nation, becomes his translator. In addition she strangely occupies her boyfriend's apartment while he goes to Lisbon to either break up or reignite with his wife. She also interacts with a couple girlfriends and some drama around how one friend's brother was mugged. So though there is not a great deal of plot, the story is mesmerizing, her unmoored feeling, her internal rationales, her sense of others. It is as the title suggests a story about intimacies. Between her job and the boyfriend there are decisions that will have to be made.
I have to say the writing carried the story along, really giving the reader this sense of transition. Her internal dialogue reminded me of Ferrante or Lahiri- meaning good company. I'd be very interested in her other works.
Lines:
That was, I thought, the prospect offered by a new relationship, the opportunity to be someone other than yourself.

no matter where he was he never looked anything other than a man at home.

I realized, belatedly, that she had likely applied the makeup for Adriaan’s sake; certainly she had not done so for mine. I wondered then what it was like to be a man, so often surrounded by such deliberate features, more vivid than actual nature.

I realized how removed the apartment was from the stream of life outside, through the miracles of double glazing and insulation.

And I realized that for him I was pure instrument, someone without will or judgment, a consciousness-free zone into which he could escape, the only company he could now bear—that, that was the reason why he had requested my presence, that was the reason I was there.

That layering—in effect a kind of temporal blurring, or simultaneity—was perhaps ultimately what distinguished painting from photography.

Over the course of those long hours in the booth, I sometimes had the unpleasant sensation that of all the people in the room below, of all the people in the city itself, the former president was the person I knew best.

I saw uncertainty spread through the building, blooming like mold.

What the heck did I just read and Why did I finish it? Maybe I was hoping it would get better. I will not be seeing the movie!

“As the minutes stretched onward, I began to lose track of what was actually under discussion. This was not aided by the fact that interpretation can be profoundly disorienting. You can be so caught up in the minutiae of the act, in trying to maintain utmost fidelity to the words being spoken first by the subject and then by yourself, that you do not necessarily apprehend the sense of the sentences themselves. You literally do not know what you are saying. Language loses its meaning. And yet… something did seep out. I saw the words: cross border raid, mass grave, armed youth.”

The novel’s unnamed Japanese American protagonist has just moved from New York to The Hague to work as a translator for an international criminal court. She speaks English, Japanese, and French. Her father has died, and her mother has moved to Singapore. She develops a friendship with an art curator and forms a relationship with a married man (who says he and his wife are in the process of divorcing). She is eventually assigned to work with the defense team for an unnamed West African dictator, who is alleged to have ordered ethnic cleansing after losing an election. It is set in 2016, when the UK Brexit referendum and American presidential election are imminent.

The protagonist navigates moral uncertainties involved in her job. She finds herself wondering if she is rooting for the ex-dictator even in the face of overwhelming evidence against him. She seems to lose her values and becomes extremely indecisive, both in her professional and personal life. She allows the married man to treat her as a low priority.

This book got me to thinking about the many different types of intimacies and they are almost all covered in this story. Some characters push the boundaries of intimacy, implying it exists when it does not. There are situations where one character tries to manipulate another through false intimacy. There are instances of over-sharing. The writing is fittingly intimate, too.

It is subtle and quiet, while also raising important questions about the nature of interpersonal and working relationships. I loved everything about this novel. I think I may have found a new favorite author. I need to check out Kitamura’s catalogue.

Prose without a single distinguishing characteristic, almost aggressively bland and unchallenging, except for the tsunami of comma splices — seemingly the only form of punctuation known to the author. The characters are indescribably boring, inhabiting an affectless international world of art and easy money. I can see why this is so popular: it’s the kind of book that requires absolutely nothing of its reader other than a small amount of time. Not my jam at all.½

Katie Kitamura seems to be an author that the critics love. This book was given good reviews so I thought I would try it. The unnamed narrator is a translator for the world court in The Hague, Netherlands. They deal with high crimes against humanity. Kitamura gives a vague description of the narrator. Sort of youngish, just lost her father, mother lives in Indonesia, and she currently has a lover name Adrian. Adrian is separated and may still be connected to his wife. Against this backdrop we spend the entire book in the head of the narrator(N). This creates a slow one sided pace. Kitamura has a trial of an African leader accused of enforcing Sharia law in this country and the crimes he committed as a focal point. N is the translator on the case and we get a good incite into the nature of the job and how the use of the court to prosecute 3rd world doers of evil can be construed as racist. After all the developed world countries are equally complicit in atrocities. The story touched on a few side issues but none were that interesting so that by the end of the novel, I enjoyed the overview but ultimately the story was not very compelling. Not a long book but I doubt I would give her a try in the future.½

not as gripping as I had hoped