In Intimacy, screenwriter and Buddha Of Suburbia scribe Hanif Kureishi's third novel, the author delights in watching his unsympathetic fictional creations delight in his own baseness. Nobody else has much fun. Jay, an Oscar-nominated British screenwriter of Pakistani descent, has decided to leave his girlfriend and two children, and spends an evening pondering the causes and consequences of his imminent flight. In the tradition of this sort of novel, most of his complaints have to do with sex, specifically its comparative quantity and quality outside of his domestic situation. And, in the tradition of bad-movie variations on this sort of novel, Jay has two metaphorical angels on his shoulders in the form of personal friends to help him make his decision: Victor has left his wife and regales Jay with tales of tawdry hedonism, while Asif remains happily married and tries to convince him of the erotic possibilities of hard-working, faithful domestic bliss. Neither character ever doubts own simplistic philosophies or choices, reducing them to the status of pamphlets. Jay's partner is not much more interesting: Because she's a capable and organized career woman, it follows that she's also nagging, rigid, and asexual. His sometime mistress has the opposite qualities: She's a selfless, club-hopping fantasy who has little identity outside of being sexually available. It's difficult to know whether Intimacy's misogyny stems from the author or the narrator. However deliberately ironic the title of the novel—where women can't exist as fully realized characters and the single, minor, gay character celebrates promiscuity over the possibility of a deeper sexual relationship—intimacy cannot exist in its pages. Kureishi allows no time for Jay to change, even from flashback to the present, so it's irrelevant whether or not he actually leaves in the morning. Intimacy does offer some flashes of good writing, especially in the much truer sense of ambiguity its central character feels about deserting his two children, but the relationship between Jay and the mother of those children remains shockingly undeveloped. By leaving nothing meaningful at stake, Kureishi is the one who fails to achieve intimacy with his characters or his audience.