Midnight All Day

Hanif Kureishi's previous book, Intimacy--an account of the writer's abandonment of his marriage--divided critical opinion violently, but the novel's unsparing honesty marked it as one of Kureishi's best works, with an excoriating, spiky cussedness that sidestepped the wheedling self-justifications of most "confessional" books. Midnight All Day, his new collection of short stories, continues his exploration of the irrational impulses of desire. Some of the protagonists here seem to be barely disguised avatars of the author, as if Kureishi had felt compelled to go over the earlier material obsessively, from different angles, through different voices: a prismatic opening up of the emotional complexity of Intimacy (the book is alluded to in the first story; elsewhere there are uneasy discussions about the ethics of writing). There is a clinical quality to his observations, an anatomisation born not of indifference but of fascinated curiosity at the perplexing disarray of human relationships, the shifts from desperate need to boredom, the uneasy fragility of the alliances that lovers make: "We are unerring in our choice of lovers, particularly when we require the wrong person. There is an instinct, magnet or aerial which seeks the unsuitable. The wrong person is, of course, right for something--to punish, bully or humiliate us, let us down, leave us for dead, or, worst of all , give us the impression that they are not inappropriate, but almost right, thus hanging us in love's limbo."

He perhaps shows in these stories that what he has always been interested in is the unfathomable pitch of sexuality-- ultimately idiosyncratic and endlessly fascinating, a chaotic accumulation of people's myriad specific needs, anxieties and desires.

Kureishi has moved away from the more obviously politicised terrain of earlier work, though elegiac glimpses of it surface occasionally, ruminations on the wake of idealism. If the long years of Thatcherism made a kind of political writing unavoidable, the 90s has seen a shift of focus to the landscape within, to what we are as men or women. This selfishness stems from a recognition of the inability ever to know the other. ("If falling in lov e could only be a glimpse of the other, who was the passion really directed at?") What remains is the search for gratification and the scrutiny of one's own impulses, an alternation between compulsion and a need for freedom.

The final story, "The Penis", is an unsubtle reworking of Gogol's "The Nose". It is as if, after all the analysis, Kureishi is despairing of ever reaching a better understanding of love: all that's left is one man and his dick, in uneasy alliance. --Burhan Tufail

View other editions of Midnight All Day.
View books by Hanif Kureishi.

Some high points, and some lower - Rated
Midnight All Day is a collection of short stories by Hanif Kureishi, an author whose characters often approach the low life, usually without ever actually attaining it. These stories are of variable quality, ranging from excellent to rather mundane, though they are all eminently readable, well written and well constructed. Sometimes there's just a bit too much incestuous involvement with the media. There are just a few too many writers, actors, television and film people around. One can understand why the author might meet a number of such people, but repeated use of media settings does occasionally detract from his story telling.

Despite this criticism, the characters are acutely drawn and are utterly credible. They tend to stumble or shamble through their lives from one opportunity to the next mistake, initiating and terminating relationships. Despite their tendency to write about or enact other characters, they often display very little facility for introspection. They often resort to their bottles or recreational drugs and treat sex as if it were a challenge.

So the stories deal with late twentieth century British professional middle classes, whose careers are always on top until they are bust, whose fortunes are always up until they crash, and whose relationships are always idyllic until they are failed.

Hanif Kureishi has a keen eye for the character of eighties and nineties Britain and on several occasions one feels implicitly that his subjects would not dream of discussing their woes with their parents. They are confident yet vulnerable, assertive yet indecisive, committed yet utterly ephemeral. There are occasions when these characteristics are a little overstated, but overall this is a moving and memorable collection which is probably best read one story at a time, rather than cover to cover.

Small details, large subject. - Rated
A curiously dispassionate series of stories for ones concerned with passion, desire and human relationships, although (as always) excellently written and observed. I had to do a close reading of "Four Blue Chairs" from this volume for an assignment, and especially when looking at the symbolism of the objects mentioned, it really shows how carefully crafted the stories are, and how precise the language is. The level of detail is exquisite.

A little bit indulgent? - Rated
I don't know, I was a little disappointed in this. I really enjoyed 'Love in a Blue Time' and 'Intimacy' but I just couldn't get into this one. I do enjoy Kureshi's realistic portrayals of humanity but I found his characters so, well, petty and cruel and unlikeable. I don't think it helped that the majority were men and they just seemed to be revelling in their own failures...you couln't quite feel sympathetic because it read almost like an apology, ''Yes, I am weak and cruel but, hey, that's like, nothing I can be bothered to do about it.''
Just a little self indulgent for me.

Gloomy All Day? - Rated
It is some time since I complete this book so this is really an overview from my memory....

The characters, whether married or separated, all seem to have come adrift, and their affairs with someone new are at the urging of some hidden need for intimacy - there is no clear intention or goal. There may be some pleasure, but not enough to compensate for the complications and guilt. A case of "try again, fail again."

I do not mind this theme, after all, our lives can seem random and unsatisfactory at times! And the book is never depressing - these characters are trying and are connecting at some level. What I found disappointing was that the same slice of human tragedy was served up time and time again - the stories echoed each other too strongly, and the voice was mainly that of a midlife-crisis male.

Sustaining a love was bloody work - Rated
The main theme of these sad stories written in a minor key, is the conflict between freedom, love and family: 'his freedom to live and develop as he liked, against the right of his family to have his dependable presence.'

The subjects of these stories are lonely, entangled in triangular relationships, lost, young but already burnt-out, disillusioned, emotionally afraid, or 'fighting to preserve oneself', for 'Love could be torn down in a minute like taking a stick to a spider's web.'
In this world 'without certainties', two people talking is already 'the apogee of civilisation.'

With cool, restrained sentences Hanif Kureishi evokes masterly 'the complexity and detail of inner motion.'

Not to be missed.