#98 D’Accord, Baby- Hanif Kureishi
“All week Bill had
been looking forward to this moment. He was about to fuck the daughter of the
man who fucked his wife.”
When I started this one and read the first sentence, I was
in for a tough read. But this story isn’t about that infidelity or the steamy
details of a lurid tryst. It’s about a man going through a midlife crisis
coming to grips with what’s truly important.
“How could a man have come to the middle of his life with
barely a clue about who he was or where he might go?” Up till now that crisis manifested itself in
a furious attempt to read all the great works of literature and memorize the
salient passages. When a real life crisis, namely the ruin of his marriage materialized,
his other pursuits became less important:
“And yet when he considered his ambitions…to travel overland
while reading Proust…he felt a surge of shame.”
There is a theme of Bill living in the past, the books,
remembering old slogans of the rebellious past, etc. Well crafted story.
Notable Passage: “There was comfort in the rain. He put his
head back and looked up into the sky. He has some impressions that happiness
was beyond him and everything was coming down, and that life could not be
grasped but only lived.”
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