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.

An intelligent and expansive engagement with issues of communication, comprehension, understanding, and the linguistic and other spaces that may open up through which misunderstandings can enter or where language proves inadequate in the face of the unsayability of some actions and events.

Kitamura has crafted a narrative which suggests rather than asserts, in which a brittle narrator drifts in The Hague, and where almost everyone she encounters is experiencing some kind of fragility in their relationships. As an interpreter at the international court at The Hague, the narrator faces issues of how to speak for both witnesses of massacres, and in the voice of the corrupt perpetrator in an international genocide/war crimes trial. What does it mean to represent, even temporarily, the 'I' in other people's narratives?

But there is an equal interest in the smaller intimacies and misunderstandings that appear in close personal relationships, especially here with the narrator's lover, Adriaan, and her friend Jana. There is one whole plot thread of a bookseller who is assaulted that didn't really fit the wider pattern that I could see and which left me a bit stranded, hence the not quite five star rating.

Overall, though, this is a quiet but deeply thoughtful book that I found both impressive and compelling. I disliked Kitamura's previous [book:A Separation|32861038] but may well go back to it now that I'm attuned to her digressive and suggestive prose. A book I'd be delighted to see on the 2021 Booker list. 4.5 stars rounded up to 5.