is a novella and even at its most bizarre, it too conforms strictly to Kureishi’s storytelling style. The hero, Adam, is an aging playwright in his sixties someone who is looking back at his life with a fair amount of regret. "After forty, when the color begins to drain from the world, it’s either retirement or reinvention," reflects Adam, "Pleasures no longer come easily to you, but there are pickings to be had if you can learn to scavenge for them." At such time, a young man, Ralph, approaches Adam and promises him a new lease on life. Would Adam be willing to "live" in a new, younger body? Nobody need know and he could live the life he believed he missed out on. Adam could "have a second chance." Adam is intrigued by the idea and agrees to try out the experiment for six months. He goes "shopping" for a body from a rack at an antiseptically sterile clinic the place very reminiscent of settings from the movie, "Coma." This is also where the operation takes place and where Adam is now young again; his mind has been transferred to a newer body and he is now Leo. In true Kureishi style, Leo goes through romps all over Europe indulging in mindless sexual encounters. He finally settles down in a remote Greek island amongst some Bohemian women who are using the time there as a spiritual retreat.

While the storyline might seem outlandish (and it often is) The Body nevertheless reads very well—Kureishi’s crisp screenwriting abilities (he wrote "My Beautiful Laundrette") translate to tautly written sentences. Kureishi manages to sneak in some larger questions about the meaning of life and about the distinction between bodies and souls. Is one necessarily incomplete without the other? Will the same mind in different bodies behave differently? If such transitions would indeed become possible, would the new wearer inherit the old body’s soul? Leo is surprised that his new life is not all good—he turns quite "broody" often. In the story, he finds himself being drawn at one point to a four year-old boy. Leo realizes then that he has missed out on being an involved parent. "It hadn’t occurred to me that if I wanted to begin again as a human being, it would be as a father," says Leo, "or that I would have more energy with which to miss my children living at home, their voices as I entered the house, their concerns and possessions scattered everywhere."

Predictably Leo starts getting restless in his new life and longs for his old life, even his old body. "My old body and its suffering stood for the life I had made, the sum total of my achievement made flesh, I believed I should reinhabit it," he explains. Whether Leo successfully manages to make the transition back to Adam or not is the book’s most engaging question.

Kureishi’s book reminds us that our lives are more complex than we can imagine. My life might indeed be the sum total of my body and mind—but my mind cannot be made discrete and transferred around. Reinvention of the self is surely possible but only with the materials you have on your person now. Like it or not, you are stuck—nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide.

©desijournal.com/book.asp?articleid=98

Academic year 2008/2009
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Giuseppe Improta
imgiu@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València Press