The Last Word

by Hanif Kureishi

Mamoon Azam es un monstruo sagrado, una vieja gloria literaria que ya ha escrito sus grandes obras y es un autor consagrado, pero cuyas ventas decrecen. Y sin esas ventas se le hace difícil poder mantener la casa en la campiña inglesa que comparte con su actual esposa, Liana, una italiana con carácter y bastantes menos años que él, a la que conoció y enamoró en una librería. Liana, de acuerdo con el joven y desenfrenado editor de Mamoon y el renuente beneplácito de éste, urde un plan para mejorar las finanzas familiares: encargar una biografía que servirá para revitalizar su figura en el mercado literario. Pero la vida de este consagrado escritor indio que llegó de joven a la metrópoli para estudiar y decidió convertirse en un perfecto gentleman británico no está exenta de aspectos escabrosos. Antes de Liana ha habido en su vida otras dos mujeres importantes, a las que en ambos casos destruyó: Peggy, su primera esposa, que murió amargada y enferma, y Marion, su amante americana, a la que sometió a prácticas sexuales, como poco, heterodoxas cuando no directamente humillantes. Todo ello lo indaga su biógrafo, el joven Harry Johnson, a través de cartas, diarios y entrevistas con el propio Mamoon y con personas que lo conocieron, entre ellas Marion. Pero los fantasmas y las tensiones no sólo emergen del pasado, porque la novia de Harry, Alice, pasa unos días con él en casa de Mamoon y el viejo escritor entabla una peculiar relación con ella. Y mientras tanto Liana sufre ataques de celos, Harry se lía con una criada de la casa y el biografiado le sonsaca al biógrafo informaciones sobre su voracidad sexual, su madre loca y otros aspectos turbios de su vida. Y así, entre el viejo escritor y el joven aprendiz se establece un peligroso juego de manipulación y seducción en esta novela que habla del deseo, la culpa, la lujuria, los demonios interiores, las relaciones de pareja, las fantasías sexuales y sentimentales, y el poder –en ocasiones temible– de las palabras.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Novels, British Literature, 21st Century, India, Literary Fiction

304 pages, Hardcover

First published October 21, 2013

About the author

Hanif Kureishi is the author of novels (including The Buddha of Suburbia, The Black Album and Intimacy), story collections (Love in a Blue Time, Midnight All Day, The Body), plays (including Outskirts, Borderline and Sleep With Me), and screenplays (including My Beautiful Laundrette, My Son the Fanatic and Venus). Among his other publications are the collection of essays Dreaming and Scheming, The Word and the Bomb and the memoir My Ear at His Heart.

Kureishi was born in London to a Pakistani father and an English mother. His father, Rafiushan, was from a wealthy Madras family, most of whose members moved to Pakistan after the Partition of India in 1947. He came to Britain to study law but soon abandoned his studies. After meeting and marrying Kureishi’s mother Audrey, Rafiushan settled in Bromley, where Kureishi was born, and worked at the Pakistan Embassy.

Kureishi attended Bromley Technical High School where David Bowie had also been a pupil and after taking his A levels at a local sixth form college, he spent a year studying philosophy at Lancaster University before dropping out. Later he attended King’s College London and took a degree in philosophy. In 1985 he wrote My Beautiful Laundrette, a screenplay about a gay Pakistani-British boy growing up in 1980’s London for a film directed by Stephen Frears. It won the New York Film Critics Best Screenplay Award and an Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay.

His book The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) won the Whitbread Award for the best first novel, and was also made into a BBC television series with a soundtrack by David Bowie. The next year, 1991, saw the release of the feature film entitled London Kills Me; a film written and directed Kureishi.

His novel Intimacy (1998) revolved around the story of a man leaving his wife and two young sons after feeling physically and emotionally rejected by his wife. This created certain controversy as Kureishi himself had recently left his wife and two young sons. It is assumed to be at least semi-autobiographical. In 2000/2001 the novel was loosely adapted to a movie Intimacy by Patrice Chéreau, which won two Bears at the Berlin Film Festival: a Golden Bear for Best Film, and a Silver Bear for Best Actress (Kerry Fox). It was controversial for its unreserved sex scenes. The book was translated into Persian by Niki Karimi in 2005.

He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2008 New Year Honours.

Kureishi is married and has a pair of twins and a younger son.

Reviews

[Maciek · Rating 2 out of 5]

Harry Johnson is a young and aspiring writer who is offered the chance of a lifetime - to make his name as the biographer of Mamoon Azam, a giant of British literature. But now Mamoon is in his 70's, his novels aren't selling like they used to, and he's slowly being forgotten - a biography is the last opportunity to generate interest, and for Harry the only chance to meet and work with a writer whom he greatly admires. What could go wrong?

When it was first published, The Last Word attracted much attention (including mine) because of its subject matter - critics and readers alike saw it as a lampoon of a real author/biographer relationship: that of V.S. Naipaul and Patrick French, whose biography - authorized by Naipaul - became famous for presenting the writer candidly as "bigoted, arrogant, vicious, racist, a woman-beating misogynist and sado-masochist".

Those seeking a battle of wills as promised by the blurbs are bound to find themselves disappointed with The Last Word, as it simply doesn't deliver. Hanif Kureishi could have used the premise to ask interesting questions. What is the real nature of an artist? Do artists who have created great works need to be great people? Can we truly ever separate an artist from their art?

Not much of it is touched upon in The Last Word. Although the book clearly aimed to observe the disintegration and downfall of a once great and acclaimed artist, I couldn't help but to see a downfall of Mr. Kureishi himself - despite its short length the novel is tedious and desperately lacks a plot to move it forward; characters are one-dimensional and forgettable, the prose is dull, observations about life in modern Britain bland and uninteresting. This coming from a writer who was named by The Times as one of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945 is particularly disappointing, and especially so as I chose this book to be my introduction to his work - which I wouldn't recommend anyone to do. There's no "youthful exuberance" here, as promised by the back cover - but it might be somewhere in his previous novels.

[Shane · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The madness of writing is the antidote to true madness”- one of the myriad of insights into writing and publishing that pepper this book, suggests just that: this is a writer’s novel, a novel about writers and their hangers-on, and one that discards pretensions of plot, character, pacing and all those other elements of craft that readers come to expect in a novel, but which writers consider necessary evils to accommodate when delivering a novel.

The story covers a month in the life of a biographer, Harry, who spends it with his subject: a renowned but fading Nobel-prize winning Indian-born, colonial writer, Mamoon, and his gatekeeper Italian wife, Liana, in a crumbling country manor. Mamoon is a despicable man and so is his biographer; both are libidinous, adulterous and self-absorbed. The wives, partners and lovers of these men crave love and attention from them, which they are unable to provide because they are absorbed only in themselves and their work. As Harry plumbs into Mamoon’s life, pulling out as much salacious detail as he can, the Nobel winner in turn is getting his own back on the biographer by writing a novel about him, exposing Harry’s own peccadilloes. As for the women, Liana has a “see but not touch” sexual flirtation with Harry, while the aging Mamoon has a “see, but we are not sure whether he has touched” relationship with Harry’s pregnant partner, Alice. And Harry has a sexual relationship with the maid, Julia, while proclaiming his undying love to Alice. No one feels guilt, they just get on with it.

The modus operandi of the publishing industry is laid bare: write a saucy biography of this fading literary star and rekindle interest in him; issue reprints of his many books in their many translations to catch this wave of renewed interest; sell the salacious bits unearthed during the research for the biography to the tabloids; spin off into a TV show; republish the biography in five years as a second edition with a new chapter detailing the writer’s death and start the circus rolling all over again.

The story line is haphazard, the characters are one dimensional; all that matters is what spews from their mouths in terms of their insights into the “madness of writing.” Quotes are abundant:
“Literature was a killing field—no decent person had picked up a pen”
“Words were the bridge between chaos and reality.”
“Art is seduction. Indiscretion is the essence of biography.”
“Marriage domesticates sex but frees love.”
“All sex must include a poisonous drop of perversion to be worth getting into bed for.”
“A writer is loved by strangers and hated by his family.”
“In London, you never see white people working.”
“Frustration makes creativity possible.”
“All religions are concerned with weaning their adherents off desire.”

Why am I regurgitating these quotes? Because they are all that is merit worthy in this book. The story line spirals into a cartoon and the scenes jump around with a lack of continuity and fluidity. Character information is strewn all over the book, some at the very end, resulting in us not quite knowing these people even by the time the novel concludes.

One thing is obvious: biographies can lead to fractured relationships and ill health, and there is no guarantee of the planned outcome. A lot of emotion gets released, many secrets are revealed, and new and tangled relationships are formed.

As for the work itself, the publisher at one stage looks at the biographer’s manuscript and says, “This is shit. Improve a million times,” and I wondered whether this was a true quote hurled at Kureishi himself while he was wrestling with this book, a criticism that he didn’t quite take to heart, or if he did, resulted only in a half improved version. I suppose he set himself up with a tough challenge when, given the premise, this story is derived primarily from encounters between the biographer and his subject, and the supporting cast, and when all there is to work with is dialogue between the players about events that had occurred in the past. The only way I could reconcile myself to reading this book was to say, “It’s a book about a writer and a touchy subject: the writers’ biography. How would you feel if people went poking into your personal life trying to find skeletons in the closet?”

The last word left with me was more a question: can one separate the life of an artist from his work, and appreciate or depreciate each half separately and distinctly? This is a question for our times as many artists are falling off their pedestals today for lives improperly lived.

[Esil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to Scribner and Netgalley for an opportunity to read The Last Word. Before I started reading this book, I was a bit apprehensive given all of the negative reviews on Goodreads. But I was determined to read it with a positive and open mind. After all, Kureishi wrote My Beautiful Launderette, I thought. My Pollyanna attitude worked well for the first third of The Last Word, but I must admit that as I got further into the book, my enthusiasm began to wane. The story started feeling aimless and disorganized, and two particular aspects of the book started to grate on me. First, both the protagonist and the famous author he writes about are not particularly nice to the women in their lives, and yet these women fawn over them (I realize this happens in real life, but it's still irritating). And secondly, and this is not Kureishi's fault, I have recently read a book with a very similar plot -- Meeting the English by Kate Clanchy -- that I enjoyed far more. So why 3 stars and not 2 or even 1? Regardless of the flaws in the story, Kureishi's writing is good, and The Last Word remains very readable with the odd flash of real brilliant writing. And, thankfully, in the end the story comes together quite cleverly -- the title is The Last Word for a reason.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Theoretically, this should have been a novel I loved. The subject matter sounded very appealing, it is set in the literary world, which appeals to readers, and it started well. However, somehow, the book did not live up to the promise of either the storyline or the strong beginning. Harry Johnson is a young writer who has published one biography, on Nehru, and has been commissioned by publisher, Rob Deveraux, to write the life story of the great author, Mamoon Azam. Azam is a ‘serious’ novelist which, in reality, means that he has a lot of status but not a great deal of money. His reputation is fading, along with his book sales, and a new biography could be just the thing to help bring him back into the public eye.

Harry Johnson longs for wealth and security. He wants to settle down with his fiancée, Alice; to have a house worthy of his status and enhance his reputation. For him, writing Mamoon’s biography can bring him as many plaudits as the book could earn the subject of the biography. Meanwhile, as Mamoon’s second wife, Liana, begs Harry to write a ‘gentle’ book, Rob is asking him to seek out as much dirt as possible and write a salacious biography which will sell. Before long, Harry’s life is becoming complicated, he feels manipulated and his dreams begin to fall apart. Meanwhile, although Mamoon states he is happy to have Harry write his story, the author seems to avoid him at all costs – beetling away whenever he approaches and refusing to answer any questions.

Even while writing this review, I keep thinking what a good book this could have been. If I had only cared about the characters or found them more sympathetic, but somehow I didn’t. In the middle of the novel, the storyline floundered and I struggled to the end. Overall, the beginning of the book is the most enjoyable part, but it lost focus, although the author did manage to create a good ending. A reasonably enjoyable read, but it could have been so much better. Lastly, I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.

[Esther · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh my. Really didn't like this. I've read and liked most of Kureishi's novels (loved The Buddha of Surburbia) but this was awful. The elderly Indian writer and the younger guy assigned to write a biography of him are both just complete shits. Not in a funny way, just rather whiny or pathetic or even worse, just dull. Also there is a whole bad smell of misogyny over the whole book. The female characters mostly wives, current and previous, of the elderly writer are depicted as needy or shrill or bad at oral sex, not pleasing Mamoon enough etc. The young biographer has a one dimensional girlfriend who the elderly writer lusts after. Reading this in January 2018 in peak #metoo era was just too much. Its all male entitlement, dominance, sexual harassment dressed up as humor. But the writing was not good enough for this to be funny or a sharp satire. It was really two crappy men, messing about. 'You are a succulent woman, juicy as a dolphin' vomit.

Googling some reviews from when this was published puzzled me. The Guardian really rated it. The 'enjoyable set pieces' I just found a bit embarrassing.

[Maricruz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Esta novela es como escuchar hablar a alguien pensando todo el rato que está de coña, y descubrir luego que no, que habla totalmente en serio. Daba para sátira y se queda en novela entretenidilla e imposiblemente misógina. Encima tiene diálogos como este:

—Your penis is my dog. I love the taste of you in my mouth.
—Bon appétit.

[Gerhard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book. It is the first Hanif Kureishi novel I have read; I had no idea he was so prolific, including short stories and screenplays. The ‘writer writing about writing’ genre is a well-trodden area, but Kureishi deftly delivers a very funny and ultimately highly affirming account of the profession.

I think to some extent The Last Word was a victim of its own publicity when it was published initially, due to the perceived wisdom that Kureishi’s book would be a thinly veiled skewering of the relationship between V.S. Naipaul and Patrick French. While the allusion is always there in the background, it is nothing more than a mirror to reflect Kureishi’s own ideas about writers and writing.

Thus many people were equally disappointed and puzzled by The Last Word, which is a real pity, as it is an incisive and engrossing book. The plot, as it were, is about writer-for-hire Harry Johnson’s assignment to research a warts-and-all biography of the famous Mamoon Azam.

Both writers are dependent on the project for various reasons: Harry for a steady job, while the Azam family hopes that its timely publication will resurrect the dying embers of the patriarch’s reputation (not to mention rekindling his book sales).

Much of the humour, and indeed the sadness, derives from the sparring between these two men: Harry is monumentally frustrated by Mamoon’s reluctance to divulge the kind of dirt he is dependent on, while Mamoon resists both the intrusion and the crude attempts to recast his life as the elements of a tabloid bestseller.

Both men are extremely unlikable characters, whose behaviour has had lifelong repercussions for their families and friends. It is testament to Kureishi’s craft that he allows the reader to empathise with these total shitheels.

Indeed, both Harry and Mamoon do not realise they are on a kind of journey of discovery together: exactly what this journey is, and its final outcome, is both poignant and ironic (and explains, with solemn majesty, the true meaning of the book’s title, The Last Word).

One of the most important points raised by this book is the extent to which the reading public has a ‘right’ to know everything about a writer, versus that writer’s own need for respect and privacy (and the right to be a total shitheel if he or she wishes to be).

So much of popular culture is celebrity-driven, and writing is no exception: one only has to look at the cult of personality around writers as diverse as Harper Lee and J.K. Rowling. Even if writers choose to opt out of the celebrity circuit, like Salinger and Pynchon, this does not stop the relentless mythologising and gossip-mongering.

We also tend to lose focus on the true role of an author, Kureishi argues, “as an artist, a writer, a maker of worlds, a teller of important truths, and that this was a way of changing things, of living well, and of creating freedom.”

[Jibran · Rating 4 out of 5]

Typical of Kureishi's style, but not as good and interesting as his last novel (Something To Tell You), this is a tempestuous story of a literary novelist (Mamoon Azam), an Indian immigrant who moves to England as a student, who commissions a young writer (Harry) to write his biography. In old age, and with struggling book sales and depleting income, the septuagenarian novelist sees his biography as a good publicity stunt and to come full circle with 'the last word'.

A game of wits ensues: finely-crafted and hilarious series of incidents that see the novelist resisting the biographer's piercing questions, interviews he's always evading, withholding vital information, not wanting the curtain of secrecy to lift from his past, and basically requiring the biographer to write a loud paean hailing the great services the novelist has rendered to the post-colonial literature.

Things begin to fall apart when the biographer insists on interviewing a lover of the novelist whom he'd dumped for an Italian fashionista. The biographer is put through a lot of mental pressures, but he comes out with the book when the novelist suffers multiple strokes and goes bedridden, but at the cost of losing his partner and mother of his twins to the dying novelist's amorous advancements.

It's a dark satire of the modern literary world, its penchant for showering plaudits on writers who can be best described as mediocrities, of the necessities of the publishing business, and duping the public with what's worthwhile and that what is not. The narrative also critiques the faux halo of superiority around great writers: they are normal people like us, not necessarily more intelligent than non-writers, but certainly special as 'word-masters', but despite all, they have the same fears and desires like the rest of us.

But I have to say, Kureishi's characters are perfect examples of a Freudian world in which everyone responds to their libido in a freewheeling, uninhibited way. In fact, a person's life trajectory is dictated by their privates. Fidelity is not possible, no one is happy with their spouses or partners for long, and there comes inevitable infidelity, adultery, and sexual depravity - an unavoidable reality that is much challenged and condemned by our social mores, albeit unsuccessfully.

Kureishi expends a lot of space pontificating on the relationship between love and desire and whether both are compatible. It seems they are not, if honesty be made the judge.

Filled with piercing insights, loaded with cleverly-crafted sentences, charged with politically incorrect statements ('surely', says the character of Mamoon to a black feminist academic, 'being black isn't an entire career these days, is it?') and a clever laying out of the story through long and interesting dialogue-writing, it's quite an enjoyable novel.

[Carina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eh... I tried to like it but it got tiring rather quickly. Some parts were initially clever and intriguing, but it grew stale, like a child who's told one clever joke and wants to continue it all night. Painfully determined to be Freudian, the one dimensional characters rotate between telling us how awfully intellectual they are, bonking, philosophizing about bonking, and being upset their relationships are a mess. Potential themes are abandoned in favor of more bonking or bonking philosophy. I half expected the Benny Hill theme to start playing (although of course, in a meaningful and ironic way).
There will be some who love this book - the writing is well styled, there is wit, some great lines, dramatic characters, and much bonking.

[Helen Stanton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great start, great ending, dull as ditch water in between ....

[Ro Prufrock · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ugh. What I hoped to get were interesting and funny insights on writing, remembering, identity etc blah blah. What I got was: sex, as usual. It’s like since authors have realised that you are indeed allowed to write about sex they don’t even try to find interesting things to say anymore, because penis is mightier than the word or whatever. This sounds overly dramatic, but books like this make me tired of literature. I just want to open one goddamn book without a penis popping up into my face like some sort of freudian jack-in-the-box. :/

A little thing I found actually good: [spoiler] when a few chapters before the end we get to know that Mamoon wrote a book, too. This was actually interesting and unexpected, unlike basically everything else in the book.

[George Ilsley · Rating 1 out of 5]

This has to be the strangest, most perplexing, least satisfying novel I've read in ages. The tone is inconsistent and the dialogue, in places, has to be a parody of over-writing. I'm surprised I got through this, because it is quite boring in stretches, but it was so weird I just kept reading because I just could not believe it could be so bad without some kind of surprise pay-off or revelation. Like the whole thing had been some kind of joke. That's why I labelled it a satire, because that is really the kindest thing you can say about it.

Finished it yesterday. I can't remember what happened.

[Pip · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 - quite funny sometimes in a snarky sort of way, whole thing left me cold tho. Felt more like a play than a novel

[Simon Fay · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m not one who’s afraid to abandon a story. I’m very much of the Dorris Lessing school of thought: If a book is boring you, throw it across the room.

I had to abandon The Last Word by Hanif Kureishi after about 200 pages.

It wasn't offensively bad, just incredibly bland.

The characters were made up of a stock selection that you're already familiar with, even if you haven't dipped into this genre before. There's a brash, drunken publisher. There's a fading literary powerhouse who's at once both intimidating and pathetic. And of course, there's a naive young up and comer who will have to develop a spine in order to achieve his goals.

Hanif Kureishi seems to be very aware that his cast is made up of a gallery of flat cartoon characters, but he fails to push their characteristics to an interesting extreme. Page after page is dedicated to their mundane back stories. The interactions between them seem to only exist in order to lead up to the one-liners that Kureishi must have jotted down on the back of dinner party napkins. There are some good jokes in here, but they're overwhelmed by the sheer number that just don't land.

All in all, The Last Word gives the impression of an accomplished writer going through the motions. If there's one redeeming characteristic I found, it was that Hanif Kureishi at least had some interesting thoughts to express on life, writing and relationships. But at no point did it feel like the thoughts were coming from the people in the book, and, worse still, the ideas expressed never got close to being profound.

[Lesley Botez · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Last Word tells how a young journalist is sent by his publisher to interview an older, established but forgotten author. His task is to dig up the dirt and write as scandalous and attention-grabing a book as possible.

Hanif Kureishi has been in the news this year for his unkind comments about creative writing students. He claims that some 90 something % of them have no talent. I wanted to read his book to get a better idea of his writing style. I am an admirer of his films, I particularly enjoyed Le Weekend.

I was disappointed. I enjoyed the writing style and turn of phrase but was surprised to see that the book consisted mostly of characters describing their interviews and discussions with others. It was very much a case of telling rather than showing which would seem to go against the golden rules of CW. As a result I didn't find it engrossing and was not drawn in but felt duty-bound to read it till the end.

[Shannon Finck · Rating 2 out of 5]

This novel got steadily worse as I read on. When I arrived at the phrase "the devil's kitsch bitch," I couldn't bring myself to keep reading...because who writes that phrase down and thinks to himself, "Yup, solid gold. I'm not going to edit this at all." The second star is only because I found the first half so engaging. So admittedly, though I rarely fail to complete books I start even when I'm having a bad time, I never finished this one, and you shouldn't either. Have a cocktail or something instead. This read is about as good as a drink with vodka, but not as good as either a drink with gin or with whiskey.

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like hanif kureishi, he is witty and funny and clever and sexy. I like almost everything by him, I normally enjoy his short stories and I really enjoyed "something to tell you".
I also liked the premise in this. But this was a let down and such a waste of a good idea.
After 100 pages or so I felt like he liked the premise himself but he was bored to do something better with it so he kept on writing (mostly about insufferable characters and ridiculous situations) just to end it as soon as possible and hand it to his publisher. Dommage.

[Paulina (aspiringliterati) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not quite sure:
a) how to rate it (like, at ALL?!)
b) if I liked it
c) 3 stars are a go because it was shockingly brash and pervert and I never read a book quite like it; not one that would be somewhat critically acclaimed, that is.
d) wow; and I did not like one single character, they were all either lunatics (not likeable ones though) or utter arseholes so me finding this book weirdly readable and fascinating is a novelty in itself because I always have to relate to the character, even if just one, to like the story.

[Vivienne Strauss · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not sure why I finished this book, laziness on my part to put it down and pick up something better. Having just read two excellent but deep and rather depressing books I thought this would be a nice break. While I really enjoyed The Buddha of Suburbia, this book was really lacking. I felt nothing for the characters, none of which felt fleshed out or real.

[Symon Hill · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book very irritating. I suspect there is something I'm not getting; there are endorsements on the cover from several prominent writers, who describe the book in a way that makes it sound as if they have been reading a different book to me. Some of them comment on how funny it is. I have to say that if it were not for these comments, I wouldn't have realised that it was *supposed* to be particularly funny.

Kureishi is undoutedly skilled at using language, and it is this that saves the book from being unreadable for me. There are also some places in the plot where I felt engaged with what was going on, but they were the exception. A few of the characters are believeable and even interesting, but I found almost every character in the book very unlikeable, although Kureishi does show us some of their redeeming features towards the end.

The book is essentially about a group of upper middle class people who are to some extent or another trying to manipulate each other. The class background of the characters is perhaps what made the book hard to relate to for me. It may be that Kureishi is satirising or parodying their lifestyles, but such lifestyles are too far removed from me to be familiar with what he's satirising, so I don't know if this is why I'm not getting the joke.

Every so often, a working class character appears. Every working class character, without exception, is portrayed as ignorant and racist. One of them becomes more appealling and less racist later in the book, although this seems to happen only because of the influence of the upper middle class people. The book's potrayal of working class people was for me the most annoying and objectionable thing about it. Not only does Kureishi churn out stereotypes of working class life, he also puts dialogue into the mouths of working class characters that is not convincing. In other words, they talk like posh people but behave like posh people's image of them.

I've not read Kureishi before. I doubt I'll do so again.

[Hamza Begić · Rating 2 out of 5]

A roller coaster ride in a closed amusement park.

With this being my first book from the author himself, I did not know what to expect from one of the best English writers of all time.

Most of my friends and family told me that although his elegant style and simple dictionary dominate the book, his habits of always introducing us to his explicit yet toned down autobiographical experiences full of sex, politics and religion tone down the vibrant atmosphere and the colourful humour of his.

And that is exactly what I have felt while reading this book.
It started rolling slowly, with many hints that were just shouting : "Look at me, I am an autobiography!".
As the reading progressed, I did not really bond with any of the characters, mostly because they were lacking the depth caused by the ingenuous "plot".
However, I feel that the whole bonding process is not supposed to be achieved, but rather that Hanif intentionally hid away the depth of the characters so we can focus on the isolated psychological/ political aspect of the book, which was straight up impressive but not for everyones stomach.
When I had finished the book, i felt like the first half was a preparation for a jump out of an airplane - I was stressed out,puzzled and confused about how things will turn out, questioning my readiness for the jump itself.
But after reading the second part of the book, I was already standing on the ground, with a tingling sensation on my fingers and shoulders,shaking knees and sweaty palms.
The only thing missing was the jump itself, the adrenaline rush, hidden away between the lines of dark humour, questioning morale, sex, cruelty of life and the paradox of freedom.

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

Many reviewers have said what I wanted to say, so here’s a paraphrase of comments that express my reaction:
One of the least satisfying novels I've read in ages… tried to like it, but it got tiring rather quickly. Some parts were initially intriguing, but it grew stale, dull, tedious and uninteresting. It desperately lacks plot, seems aimless and the characters are forgettable. I kept reading because I couldn’t believe there wouldn’t be some kind of pay-off.
To this I’d add two things. I found it hard to care about any of the characters except poor scrubber Julia and – to a lesser extent – her mother, who are used up by the main male characters, Harry and Mamood, a pair of unlikeable egotists.
Also, everyone spoke in the same voice, regardless of class, ethnicity, region or intellect. England is rich in language markers that can evoke these qualities and Kureishi has lived there all his life, so there’s no excuse for this deficiency.
To round off, another paraphrase: What a good book this could have been but, despite the odd flash of brilliance, it simply doesn't deliver.

[Becky Condron · Rating 2 out of 5]

Usually one to read books in a couple of days, this one drove me to Netflix and Amazon Prime. I picked it back up and then nearly abandoned it again on 200 pages but I carried on and finished it. I've read a few of Hanif Kureishi's books and enjoyed them - now I wonder whether I was pretentious then or he has become so. Not a difficult read but it tries so hard to be clever, intellectual.

This is a story of unlikeable, tiresome people. I have never heard anyone speak to others as these characters do - as if they have thought so hard about their words, as if they are writing them down rather than conversing naturally. And I suppose in that respect, they were intriguing.

[Jacky · Rating 2 out of 5]

Made it to the end, finally!

The Last Word was a struggle to read. There wasn't a single likable or interesting character and the writing style here was alarmingly insipid, IMHO.
"an outrageous, clever and very funny story of sex, lies, art and what defines a life."
It may have been a tad clever, but it certainly wasn't very funny.
( and is it me or is Hanif Kureishi a dirty old man? some truth in fiction ? there are shades of present day Kureishi in Mamoon, and younger Kureishi in the tiresome Harry. )

[Polly Krize · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest opinion.

A good beginning, but drags on indefinitely. A young writer is engaged to write the biography of an aging writer. Should have been intriguing but fails utterly.

[Meg · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book but I don’t really know what to make of it. It is amusing, not laugh-out-loud funny. I’m not sure if it is merely a story about a young biographer, or a more subtle analysis of being a celebrated writer and what that means as the writer achieves old age.

The writing and language are precise and intelligent. The reader’s time is not unnecessarily wasted on needless descriptions nor development of trivial details. All the characters are sympathetically presented including their flaws. There were a few new words for me, but I forgot to look them up as I read, so now they are still new to me.

I didn’t know anything further about this book until writing this review. Now I see there are many people who were very disappointed in it. Perhaps I enjoyed it more because I haven’t read anything else by this author, though he is multi-award winning. I’ll probably look for more.

[April Miller · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thoroughly did not enjoy this book. When I picked it up, I thought it sounded like an interesting book about a highly praised, “has been” author. I guess it was, but it was incredibly boring and filled with way too much talk of the “power of the penis”. I found it hard to follow along with the characters, they were all extremely unlikeable anyway, plus there was no real, moving plot. The biggest conversations were about how these men can’t satisfy themselves with the women in their life. 0/10 would not recommend.

[Karin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hat mir gut gefallen. Sehr, sehr witzig und respektlos.

[Alex Zakharov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfect book for a weekend getaway – precise writing, clear thinking and a healthy ratio of insightful social commentary to plot development. Some observations:

- It is hard to compete with “Intimacy” which was the first Kureishi’s book I read (in late 90s), and back then it matched my mood and predispositions exactly right. I wonder if it would stand the test of time and I suspect it won’t because of its narrow scope and emphasis on subtlety of the character at the expense of the macro-level vision. But back then the subject matter was near and dear to me and I was very much impressed. A more recent “Something to tell you” was also quite good and I enjoyed it much better than any collection of his stories (decent but wildly uneven) or “The body” (readable but forgettable). “The Last word” is excellent and perhaps now my new favorite of his.

- I enjoyed the split of Kureishi’s personality and psyche into two main characters. He sometimes seems to struggle with favoring one over the other which I suspect is a healthy way of processing one’s internal state.

- The subjects of race, class, immigration and gender always make a welcome appearance in Kureishi’s books and I like how he manages to be harsh and sensitive at the same time. Not diluting his observations with political correctness helps.

- A fairly significant theme of the novel is playing around with the idea of reconciling (or failing to do so) one’s true personality (private self) with the public persona. Along the same lines what is one’s relationship with the mask one wears or wants to wear or thinks he wants to wear. This theme is of course as old as literature itself but Kureishi does handle it well and many of his terse observations made me pause.

- In my view Kureishi along with many other often-great writers and philosophers tend to overestimate the nature of relationship between the mask and the self. Indeed I suspect the infamous authentic self vs pretend-to-be-persona dichotomy is a false one. All too many attempts to peel off layer after layer of a complex character to get to the true identity miss the point that the sought-after authentic self is a figment of a story we tell ourselves about the person in question. The truth is probably much closer to Jon Elster’s view of human behavior. We all have multiple desires, motivations and abilities and these are heavily modulated by emotions and circumstances. Such desires and motivations can easily co-exist in partial conflict with each other so attributing primacy of authenticity to a particular mental state is utterly misleading in most non-trivial cases. And of course it goes without saying that psychoanalysts are guiltier than most in this department.

Anyway, I’m quite glad I took a break from non-fiction to read this one, was surprised Kureishi had it in him as my other old favorites (Amis, McEwan, Murakami, Pelevin) have stopped delivering.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I finished this book I really wasn't sure how to rate it. I didn't LOVE it enough for a full four stars or feel indifferent enough for a three. I guess it's a 7 out of 10 or rather it would be if we were permitted such choices. What shocked me most was the realisation that this is the only book out of the last 100 I've read and rated on Goodreads that had a reader rating of less than 3 points.

I have to say I've read some pretty poor books in the last 100 and the Last Word was like Nobel Prize winning literature to some of those that scored better. People clearly really didn't much like this book and I'm really not sure why.

I do love Hanif Kureishi's books but, like the subject of his fictional account of a younger man writing an older man's biography, his best years and books may well be behind him. But when you've been able to write such amazing books as the 'Buddha or Suburbia' or the 'Black Album', that's a very high pedestal from which to slip and he's still only half way down the mountain when many of his peers are still sitting in the car park at the foot of the hill.

The book juxtaposes a young ambitious biographer against an older, once famous but now declining novelist. The former has been commissioned to write the life of the latter with a view to giving the older man's career a twilight boost in popularity. Harry the biographer goes to stay with Mamoon and his wife at their country mansion, reads the diaries of Mamoon's late wife, travels to meet with the author's past lovers and wants to write a scandalous reputation-ruining account of his lecherous and sado-masochistic past.

Harry is prone to judging Mamoon whilst ignoring his own many sexual misdemeanors. He's sexually predatory and grasping just like the old man but blind to his own failings. He's caught up in a battle of wits to get any detail out of his subject whilst sponging off his hospitality and having a wild old time in the country, knocking-off Mamoon's 'help' whilst commuting back to his girlfriend, Alice. We've got racism, sexism, ageism, classism, town-versus-country-isms and lots of other isms to play with and there's plenty to think about.

The characters are all in their own ways weak and unpleasant but that doesn't make them uninteresting. They have very human failings and I liked most of them in spite of themselves. The book laid out plenty for us to judge whilst perhaps reminding us that few people are perfect - even if they're less perverted than some of this motley bunch.

I enjoyed it. I didn't love it but I liked it well enough to be perplexed by how much others didn't like it.