Intimacies

One way people relate to other individuals is through learning their names, so the author’s choice to leave the narrator nameless forces readers to find other ways to understand her. This stylistic choice also creates a sense of impersonal distance that is ironic for a novel titled Intimacies, and as the novel progresses, the first-person narrator maintains a coolly detached tone despite having just endured a series of destabilizing life events. Though the narrator reveals little about her past, she is emerging from a season of grief and entering a time of great transition, and the absence of information about her internal conflicts ultimately serves to emphasize the presence of that which remains unacknowledged. As she struggles to find her place in a new country, the recurring theme of Home as a Reflection of Identity reflects her continuing uncertainty over where she belongs. The decision to uproot herself from New York and start a new life and career opens many possibilities, but she soon finds that an international, transient city like The Hague is not an ideal place to build a solid sense of belonging. As a result, the narrator finds herself being swallowed whole by the city’s intensity. Although she has found companionship with Jana, the narrator does not feel at home in her rented apartment. By contrast, Jana owns her apartment, and this fact anchors her to the community and solidifies her identity as a homeowner. Similarly, the narrator’s co-worker Amina finds a home in The Hague through her partner and growing family. Unlike her acquaintances, the narrator’s few interpersonal connections in The Hague feel tenuous and temporary at best, and this includes her problematic romantic relationship with the still-married Adriaan, who is also a father. The narrator’s sometimes tentative narrative style also conveys her inherent uncertainty, for she constantly undermines her own assessments of the events happening around her. Her interiority and insecurity create an understated tension in the story as she slips in and out of social situations yet never feels part of the action and continues to exist only in the margins as she desperately seeks a solid place in the larger story.

In addition to the challenges of living in The Hague, working at the Court—an institution of international justice—puts the narrator adjacent to a large, powerful organization that highlights the many ways in which she feels powerless in her own life. As the narrator struggles with the constant effort of Navigating Power Imbalances in a range of deeply complex situations, the novel shows how the narrator’s personal story is inextricably linked to larger narratives and investigates the discordance that these connections create. On one level, The Hague’s international court represents a power imbalance because it stands accused of prosecuting a disproportionate number of cases from African countries. Thus, although the Hague attempts to disguise itself as a place of peace and orderliness, the narrator senses a malicious undercurrent of anxiety and violence in the city. The very existence of The Hague raises the question of whether a single city can or should shoulder the responsibility of carrying out acts of global justice while also struggling to maintain the safety and well-being of its own citizenry.

While contemplating the implications of being employed by a world court, the narrator becomes entangled in personal situations that are also fraught with deep power imbalances, and these situations push her into a state of frightened passivity as she fails to assert necessary boundaries for her own safety. For example, when Kees corners her at the museum, he not only exerts his physical dominance over her by grabbing her around the waist without her consent, but he also wields his emotional power against her by maliciously revealing personal information about Adriaan. He perceives that exposing how little she knows about Adriaan will destabilize her, and he seeks to capitalize on her perceived weakness in order to make his own inappropriate overture. Stunned by the information and by his overt emotional manipulation, the narrator fails to resist his untoward physical touch or to stand up for herself. Additionally, her relationship with Adriaan is similarly imbalanced, for Adriaan exists in a wealthier class and enjoys firmly established physical and emotional ties to The Hague. Because he inherited his lavish apartment from his family, he does not understand the narrator’s itinerant experience. Moreover, Adriaan has a wife, children, and an established family, and this immediately puts him in a position of power in the relationship as the narrator realizes that he could leave her at any point to reunite with his family. Navigating the various power imbalances in her professional world and her private life disrupts the narrator’s sense of stability and renders her deeply uncertain of her place in the world.

Through Amina’s description of the uncomfortable familiarity that she experienced while translating for the militia leader, the narrator becomes more fully aware of the complexities of her role as an interpreter. By investigating the theme of Intimacy and the Search for Authenticity, the narrator’s interpretive work in the Court becomes a metaphor for how she views those around her and how she imagines they see her. Ironically, even though the narrator’s profession requires her to use language and communication as crucial tools to discern truth, she struggles to interpret people’s intentions and motives in her own relationships. The complexities of her job as an interpreter thus become a metaphor for her struggle to form deep interpersonal relationships, and throughout the novel, she will struggle to fully understand other people. Whenever she thinks that she has made progress in this area, something undermines her confidence. This happens even in inconsequential moments, as evidenced by her experience on the bus ride to work when she second-guesses her own interpretation skills. Although she privately celebrates having a solid grasp of the Dutch language, she suddenly realizes that she cannot fully interpret the students’ conversation, and this lack of clarity undermines her confidence. As a result of this and other such misunderstandings, she often keeps people at a distance and resists forming intimate friendships for fear of being misunderstood.