Daniel, the main character in The Ultimate Intimacy, certainly asks himself
the right questions, but because he is a dull and rather earnest personality,
the subtleties of
his
angst left me cold. He lives in a tedious marriage, having lost his vivacious
first wife several years before. Now he succumbs to the delights of a
warm-hearted woman who herself is struggling with a rather overbearing husband.
(Quite why she finds Daniel interesting is a puzzle.)
If I had felt the man was going to make some progress morally or emotionally I might have considered he was worth pursuing through the long journey of what seems a fairly obvious story. However, Daniel plods through the book in his pedestrian navel-gazing way and I lost interest in the process.
Overseas reviewers had mixed reactions to this book. Several saw it as yet another achievement in the Klima canon. But at least one (Carole Angier of the Independent, a self-professed Klima fan) struggled, as I did, to care about Daniel's lack of certainties. Perhaps she and I were missing something.