The Ultimate Intimacy - Hardcover

Klima, Ivan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802116256 ISBN 13: 9780802116253

Publisher: Grove Pr, 1998

Synopsis

When a beautiful married woman walks into Pastor Daniel Vedra's life and conjures up memories of his first wife, Jitka, he struggles with the chaos the affair creates for his wife, his children, his vocation, and his future.

About this title

About the Author

Ivan Klma was born in Prague in 1931, where he still resides. He is the author of Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light-New York Times Notable Book of the Year and one of Publisher Weekly's Best Books of 1995. He is the author of several other books including A Ship Named Hope, Love and Garbage, and Judge on Trial.

From the Back Cover

With the brilliance and humanity that have made him a major figure in world literature, Ivan Klma, in The Ultimate Intimacy (a New York Times Notable Book of the Year), explores the universal themes of love, adultery, and faith. Pastor Daniel Vedra cares for his family and his congregation, ministers to prisoners, and is a sought-after commentator on the rapidly changing society of the Czech Republic. But when a beautiful stranger comes to hear him preach, Daniel soon finds himself falling in love with another man's wife. As his heart stirs, the order that once underpinned Daniel's life begins to unravel. And as a result, he stands to betray everything he has lived for: his family, his vocation, and his God.

Reviews

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. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In this remarkable novel, Klima explores rather untypical contemporary novelistic territory: a minister spreading the word of Christ's love. Reverend Vedra's efforts to preach love--with his own family members, his parishioners, the prison inmates, or with the married woman he will see romantically--are carried on amidst a sustained theological self-questioning. Moreover, Vedra is consumed by a desire to understand and achieve intimacy, a drive that eventually alters much of his life. In his "ultimate intimacy," the trusting self may reveal to the other what it has not even revealed to itself and "whenever we are able to accept and trust . . . we reduce the level of social evil." Ironically, though, in Vedar's achievement of such intimacy, he reveals to his lover (and himself) his loss of faith in Christ. Klima's use, at times, of letters from various parties in a juxtaposed simultaneity rather than a chronological sequence skillfully dramatizes the gaps and distances between people, most pointedly at the end between Vedra and his lover, whose letters, exchanged simultaneously, reveal, respectively, the loss and the discovery of faith in Christ. Jim O'Laughlin

Czech pastor Daniel Vedra preaches God's limitless love and demonstrates it through ministering to his congregation, community, and family. His staid and predictable life changes when a female visitor who reminds the pastor of his first wife begins attending, though she has little faith in God. She is looking for shelter from her possessive husband and a surrogate lover in Daniel. Though it is against everything he teaches, the couple begins a secret affair; ironically, as it continues, the woman draws closer spiritually while Daniel drifts away, contemplating the validity of Christ's teachings on love and fidelity. This is certainly not the first time the subject of forbidden love in this context has been addressed, but Klima goes deeper than most into the minds of the conspirators as they deceive their families and wrestle with their consciences. The vivid portraits of the families' lives through letters, diary entries, and everyday scenarios rival Updike's best prose, showing that the most important mechanics of love involve the mind much more than the body. Many people will recognize a bit of themselves in this sad but stunning and insightful book. Highly recommended.?Marc A. Kloszewski, Indiana Free Lib, Pa.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Grove Pr
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0802116256
• ISBN 13: 9780802116253
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 387