Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

Intimacies by Katie Kitamura is an introspective novel about woman who moves countries and feels untethered while working as an interpreter in war crime trials and about the people she meets and relationships she develops.

On paper this is my kind of book, I generally enjoy character driven novels but sadly this one wasn't for me.
I found our protagonist just dull and boring , i kept waiting for something more but her thoughts and actions were just not inspiring me to read . The novel had the premise to develop 3 sub stories but it just didn't go anywhere at all and I was also expecting to read more about the court case after reading the synopsis . I also could not get used to the lack of quotation marks and the long sentences did not work for me .

I would struggle to be able to review this book due to issues with the file/download. The issues stopped the flow of the book. The issues are:
- Missing words in the middle of sentences
- Stop/start sentences on different lines
- No clear definition of chapters.

Not sure if it was a file/download issue but there were lots of gaps and stops/starts which really ruined the flow. I would love the chance to read a better version as the description of the book appeals to me. I would be more than happy to re-read the book with a better file or as a physical book as the book topic and genre are of interest to me. If you would like me to re-review please feel free to contact me at thesecretbookreview@gmail.com or via social media The_secret_bookreview (Instagram) or Secret_bookblog (Twitter). Thank you.

A beautifully told novel that drew me in slowly to the world of language and art, a contemplation on what it means to connect to each other, and a look at alienation and loneliness. This is truly and intimate experience between the narrator and the reader.

I expected this to be more about the court case, but the heart of the book is really the internal journey of the main character, who is an interpreter. The writing is sharp, and taut, but still absorbing; every work has an impact. The author covers a lot of emotional ground, but keeps the tension going throughout. Phenomenal.

This is a great read and i would recommend you read this! This was a really fun read which I read so so quickly. I was kindly gifted an e-book in return a honest review.

It is impossible to typecast this book. It is a contemplation and meditation on people and relationships, a thriller and a love story all rolled into one. Beautifully written and thoughtful it is an exceptional read.

In American author, Katie Kitamura’s latest novel she touches on the themes of language, morality, power and belonging through the life of an interpreter working in The Hague. The result is a minimalist, yet potent story infused with a lingering unease.

An interpreter who remains unnamed throughout the novel relocates to The Hague from New York to take up a position as a staff member at the International Court of Justice. Her decision to move continents has been fuelled by the death of her father, her mother’s return to her home country, Singapore, and subsequently New York no longer felt like home. However, as the narrative progresses, we soon see that neither does The Hague and the challenge of putting down your roots and belonging in a foreign country becomes pertinent.

Full review: https://westwordsreviews.wordpress.com/2021/08/28/intimacies-katie-kitamura/

This novel deserves the enormous praise it is receiving. It is rightly acclaimed – I haven’t read another book like it and don’t think I will again for a long time.

Thank you for sharing this book with me. It was well-written, with interesting characters, and an unusual setting. The protagonist seemed quite lonely, and had to fit in with everyone around her, rather than pursue her own path. It was a moving story about her experiences.

On paper, Intimacies is my kind of read. In actuality, well, turns out it is anything but. While it ticks all the ‘in’ boxes (an unnamed narrator, ambiguous storyline, no quotation marks), the ‘story’ and characters were dusty, dull, done-to-death. Our narrator is an interpreter who lives and works in The Hague and works for the International Court where her latest assignment sees her interpreting for a former president, much beloved by his people, who stands accused of many atrocious war crimes. She’s in a lukewarm relationship with Adriaan, a man who can be best described as being as interesting as Wonder Bread. The guy’s wife left him but they are still married and that’s about it. Our protagonist thinks about this woman in a wannabe-Rebecca kind of way.
Our narrator has a friend Jana whose characterisation is risible. Nothing she said rang true (to me of course, feel free to disagree and nay at this review), nor did it succeed in being absurd, if that even was what it was going for. Jana mentions to our mc that she saw someone being attacked in her neighbourhood and for some reason, our mc goes on to find this man’s workplace and goes there because of reasons unknown.
Nothing seems to happen. We have stilted interactions between the same two or three characters, some uninspired comments about violence, the judicial system, language, and the tricky nature of interpretation. I was particularly disappointed by the language aspect of this narrative. I am bilingual (and i am taken for a foreigner in both of the languages i speak...go figure) and my mother has been a translator for...well, all my life. So, naturally, I am interested in languages and translation, and I am keen on reading books that explore these fields. Intimacies regurgitates the same tired ideas on these topics, and even the interpretation angle felt poorly explored. The scenes taking place at the Court were odd, particularly for the way they were executed.
There is no plot as such. The mc wastes some time navel-gazing, thinking not so deep thoughts. She has a few repetitive and inauthentic encounters and exchanges with the same group of not so believable characters ….and that’s it. The whole relationship between her and this married man was bah. Who cares? Not me! I am tired of reading this same type of heterosexual sort-of-love-triangle. Jana seemed forgotten by the narrative and sidelined to make space for that man who was attacked. This guy goes on to deliver a stilted monologue that sounded so insincere.
In short, Intimacies was a vexing read. I recommend you check out more positive reviews before you decide whether to read this or not (on the plus size, it’s a short read).

Enthralling book about a stranded interpreter in Le Hague's International Court. The writing really /is/ intimate and her thoughts and life events will trap you in.

One of Barack Obama's pick for books of the summer, I was delighted when presented with the opportunity to review an early copy of Intimacies. I went into this expecting it to be largely about the court trial our centre character, the interpreter, is assigned to. However, this novel is more of an exploration of character, relationships, and language. It's fair to say that I enjoyed it none the less.

I hardly know where to start. This book covers a lot of emotional ground. The writing is tight, there are no word counting 'fillers'. It's taught, it thrums with tension from beginning to end, a highwire act of writing virtuosity. Can you tell I liked it?

The unnamed narrator of Katie Kitamura’s Intimacies is an interpreter. After her father dies and her mother moves to Singapore, she leaves New York for The Hague where she has taken a temporary position at the international court. We follow her attempts to settle into this new life, professionally and personally, form new friendships and a tentative romantic relationship. She is unmoored and somewhat destabilised, seeking permanence and stability but doubtful that she will find either in this particular chapter of her life. Her lover leaves for a time to deal with his soon to be ex-wife, asking her to stay in his apartment where she feels erased as a person while at work, a high-profile case against a former president of an unnamed African state brings its own problems.

Intimacies is a subtle, quietly impressive novel. I found it compelling, not only in the way it explores the themes of language, communication, alienation and understanding the complexities of human relationships and today’s world but also for the intimacy it built between me, as a reader and the work. Highly recommended.

My thanks to Random House, Vintage, Jonathan Cape and Netgalley for the opportunity to read Intimacies.

Impressive and well written novel about an interpreter at the International Criminal Court of Justice in The Hague. The style is almost Cuskian (as my goodreads friend Sarah already mentioned in her review), which I liked a lot; the story is told with a certain detachment and the main character is nearly invisible. Also, the story is fascinating both on a personal and a political level. The protagonist has moved from New York to The Hague and is finding her place, but it doesn't feel like home yet. She has a job, an apartment, has made some friends and has a lover, but nothing feels 'solid.' She feels vulnerable, also in her job, as she becomes the interpreter for a high placed criminal of war and his victims, and has to listen to and translate horrible crimes. A complex, but extremely interesting novel.
Thank you Jonathan Cape and Netgalley for the ARC.

I thought this was really, really good. I can totally see why Obama put this on his summer reading list list.

To me, the theme of this book was intimacy (DUR, the title says as much!) - or more specifically: secrets, blind spots, what remains undisclosed to the people you know best. We see things like the intimacy of objects in an apartment, like the photos of your new boyfriend's ex-wife. More prominently is the intimacy of translation - specifically simultaneous, live translation. As one character observes, <i>”She was constantly aware that she and the accused were the only two people in the courtroom who understood the language she was speaking.</i>”

I was reminded of Ishiguro and Coetzee in terms of the reserved, quiet style. The narrator works in the Hague as a translator, and some of the most interesting parts of the book (I'm sure Obama really dug 'em) are the parts that show the everyday parts of the job, and its effects on the translators. I liked how a job that is meant to clarify and interpret leaves the narrator in a constant state of confusion, ambiguity, and murkiness. We see the rootlessness of those who work at court, and how difficult it is for them to not end up empathising/sympathising for those for whom they translate, even if they are guilty of the very worst crimes. This feels like SUCH an interesting metaphor for reading for me, and I love that Kitamura dares to go here - the idea that it is possible to empathise with someone who killed a ton of women in an extremely brutal way. It is brave, and acknowledges the complexity of the world, as opposed to trying to seem morally and ethically perfect. No wonder Javier Marías uses translator characters so much - the metaphorical potential for them is SO useful.

I also liked the subtle critique of the court, the way we see the protestors supporting an African president on trial for genocide, and their accusations of the court working as a tool of Western imperialism that only targets African nations. There’s also good discussion on the effects of translation, of living between two languages, two minds. When the translator observes <i>"I'm so focused on the minutiae of the session that I lose track of the larger story… you can be so caught up in the minutiae of the act "</i> it feels like a metaphor for the modern condition in which we all live. That is to say: the personal drama of your everyday life (dinner parties, outings, friends, dating) vs the bigger picture of things that are too scary and overwhelming to look at..

<i>None of us are able to really see the world we are living in--this world, occupying as it does the contradiction between its banality (the squat wall of the Detention Center, the bus running along its ordinary route) and its extremity (the cell and the man inside the cell), is something that we only see briefly and then do not see again for a long time. 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.</i>

There’s some great setpieces throughout the book that keep the pace snappy. One particularly memorable scene is the Slow Food exhibition, where people 'eat' the food inside the frames, in a museum founded with fortune built from transatlantic slave trade. There’s another important chapter about the narrator translating in French for a man who wanted an Arabic translator but didn't get one. And the scene where the narrator speaks in the voice of a woman giving testimony is very powerful. I also loved the anecdote about someone who buys books for the way they look, in order to create an atmosphere for their bougie apartment- a VERY telling tale.

There’s also a wonderful interpretation of a <a href="https://www.mauritshuis.nl/en/explore/the-collection/artworks/man-offering-money-to-a-young-woman-564/ ">Judith Leyster painting</a>,an artist I’d never heard of. Of her work, the narrator’s friend observes the following:
<i>The relentless domesticity of these quiet interiors takes on a different meaning seen in that light…. It means something, to face inward, to turn your back on the storm brewing outside."</i>
This also feels like a good commentary on the novel itself – on its focus on “relentlessly domesticity,” and turning inwards, versus the storm brewing outside. Is this a GOOD thing to do? The ONLY thing we can do? It's not a question the novel can answer.

My only critique of the book is that the moment at the end with the African president felt a bit speech-y, but it was still a good moment. I can also see how some people may have a problem with the ending, but I liked how it was the opposite of what I expected.

This is a book some may find quiet and subtle and understated, but it is exactly the kind of book I really enjoy. I feel quite smug that I knew immediately after reading Kitamura's earlier books "A Separation" and "Gone to the Forest" that she was a freaking TALENT. It honestly wouldn't surprise me if she ends up winning the Nobel Prize in a few decades!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC.

One of Barrack Obama’s 2021 Summer picks – and given its subject matter that implies a real authenticity to the novel which in my view is more than matched by the power of its writing.

The author has said that this book was initially inspired by listening to Charles Taylor (ex president of Liberia) defend himself against war crimes at The Hague. Later she visited the International Criminal Court there to observe the trial of Laurent Gbabgo (ex-president of the Ivory Coast): while there realising she had visited the sand-dunes near the Court as a child (an idea she uses in the novel).

The unnamed narrator is an interpreter at the International Criminal Court – of Japanese-American descent (like the author) she has taken - rather on impulse - a 1 year maternity cover position there – moving from New York after her father’s death and her mother’s move to Singapore.

She starts a tentative relationship with a newly separate man Adriaan – who invites her to move into his flat while he visits his estranged wife (who is in Lisbon with their children) to ask for a divorce. A friend of Adriaan’s wife – Kees – seems to go out of his way to cast doubts on her relationship with Adriaan, doubts not helped by a steady diminution in communication from Portugal. Her closest friend is Jana – a Serbian/Ethiopian descended curator at the National Gallery – who owns an apartment in an edgier part of town. A husband of a friend of Jana (an antiquarian bookerseller) is violently mugged near Jana’s apartment. The narrator becomes preoccupied with her friend’s brother, who was badly assaulted in a street crime in rather unexplained circumstances – which take a rather different tone when she later sees the man in a restaurant. She attends an exhibition that Jana has curated (which gives rise to some of the strongest moments of the book)

And while all this is going on – the court gains a high profile new case (one I think very explicitly modelled on Gbabgo) and the narrator finds herself first of all asked to interpret when he is first bought to the Hague (actually based on a misunderstanding as to his choice of language) and then requested by the defence team – which turns out to be lead at a critical juncture by Kees - to aid their work.

All of this – combined with events leading up to the book - leads to the narrator having a sense of uncertainty, destabalisation and of untethering – which very much lies at the heart of the book.

Themes that the book explores include:

The impact of evil and violence.

The apparent cognitive dissonance between being pre-occupied with the cares and stresses of daily life while surrounded by wider and seemingly more weightier and terrible global matters as well as an associated sense of disorientation from a cascade of information: a dissonance and disorientation in the narrator’s life which also reflects 21st Century living against a backdrop of climate change and political turmoil.

The pliability of language – and the way in which it can be manipulated to both defend and justify

The challenges of interpretation (the author’s previous book was appropriately about a translator) - many of which ideas I think also stand for the difficulties of communication and understanding in relationships and even the difficulties of fiction writing

The Westernism and apparent anti-African bias of the International Court – this is remarked on explicitly by both accused and acknowledged by court employees, but the most powerful moment is an unacknowledged one at Jana’s exhibition as they stand “around a bust of Johan Maurits, who founded the museum with a fortune built from the transatlantic slave trade”

A brilliant discussion of Judith Leyster’s “The Proposition” (“Man offering money to a young woman”) with a feminist interpretation

And this painting I think is crucial to the book as it’s a motif that reappears through the book – with the narrator subject to the predatory and manipulative attentions of both Kees and (less explicitly) the bookseller and then more crucially the former President for who she is no more than an instrument to be used.

A discussion of painting versus photography which again stands also for the idea of knowing someone in a relationship and for capturing them in fiction

If there is a small false note in the novel – it’s when Jana’s friend Eline worries about the Brexit vote and that it is likely to go for Leave, which in turn “did not bode well for the upcoming elections in the United States” – probably making her the only liberal in the West who expected both the Brexit and Trump votes as something of an inevitability.

The author is married to Hari Kunzru and the two are the first readers of each other’s work, and the two seem to be to explore similar ideas in their work (around communication). I am reminded a little in that respect of Catherine Lacey and Jesse Ball. However unlike Lacey and Ball whose work has a not dissimilar style and even some intertextuality – it is hard to think of a greater contrast between the quietly crafted and restrained exploration here and Kunzru’s compilation (although often not total coalescence) of disparate ideas.

Overall I found this an impressive book whose quiet power grew on me during its reading.

My first Katie Kitamura novel, Intimacies was a very pleasant surprise. I'd seen the book on lots of 2021 preview lists (and had been curious about A Separation despite the low ratings) so it was suitably hyped-up in my mind -- so it is even more pleasing to report that it exceeded my already high expectations.

I don't mean to start this review sounding negative but I think that this won't be a book for everyone. It felt almost Cuskian at times, with the story told through a female protagonist who is almost invisible at times but still integral to the plot (what there is of a plot, anyway - this book is much more focused on the emotions and relationships between its characters) as it is her interactions with those around her that form the observations which make up the narrative.

If you do like this kind of novel though, then you're really in for a treat. When thinking of words to describe Intimacies the words quiet, introspective and subtle come to mind. The novel is accessible but succeeds in conveying the complex emotions (or 'intimacies') of different situations and relationships that the protagonist experiences in her personal and professional life, as well as considering the gaps that exist in our relationships where language will not suffice.

The protagonist has just left New York in the wake of her father's death and has taken up a job as an interpreter at a court in The Hague. Her mother has relocated to Singapore, and our main character feels adrift, like she isn't sure where is home to her anymore. She is having an affair which seems to have shifted somewhat to a place where she doesn't fully understand where she stands with the man involved, which ties in to her feeling of discontent in her daily life.

Interspersed with these sections of the book are excerpts of her time in court interpreting in a trial where the accused is on trial for war crimes. Our main character's struggles with remaining neutral in the face of doing her job of interpreting these heinous events and trying to convey the intricacies of language whilst doing so make for propulsive reading as well.

A truly impressive novel, and one I hope to see on prize lists later this year.