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THE ULTIMATE INTIMACY by Ivan Klíma

THE ULTIMATE INTIMACY

by Ivan Klíma

Pub Date: Jan. 1st, 1998
ISBN: 0-8021-1625-6
Publisher: Grove

A beautifully imagined and deeply moving portrayal of temporal and spiritual conflict and crisis, from the ever-improving Czech author of such compelling fictions as Love and Garbage (1991) and Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light (1995). Kl°ma's subject here is Reverend Daniel Vedra, a faithful minister to his varied congregation (which includes the prisoner he dutifully counsels) and a devoted husband and father to his family of four. But Daniel harbors a guilty secret: his ``inability to be intimate,'' to share his inmost feelings, with his plain, submissive second wife Hana; for, as Hana knows all too well, ``his heart belonged to the one who had died.'' Memories of his beautiful first wife Jitka, a cancer victim, indeed preclude Daniel's full involvement in the lives he pretends to share—until he is pursued by a seductive parishioner, a married woman resembling Jitka, and persuades himself that consenting to love is the greatest good he can do. Kl°ma examines this seemingly familiar story from a fascinating variety of perspectives, including Daniel's tortured diary entries and evasive exchanges of letters with correspondents and confidants past and present—and also focuses on Hana's quiet acceptance of her husband's distance as well as on her own reluctant (and innocent) friendship with Matou Volek, a gifted linguist scarred by a combative marriage and attracted by Hana's very placidity. What makes this novel so absorbing, and so painful, is Kl°ma's intense concentration on his characters' perturbed and perversely resourceful moral natures; their desperate self- justifying, and ultimate surrender to the consequences of their actions. A work of great analytical power that transforms discourse and thought into harrowing drama. Kl°ma's best yet.