SOURCE: “Eighties Vanities,” in Times Literary Supplement, March 28, 1997, p. 20.

In the following review of Love in a Blue Time, O'Brien commends Kureishi's perspective and observations, but finds shortcomings in his underdeveloped plots and characters.

Love in a Blue Time is described by its publishers as concerned with “the difficult, serious business of love—and hate”, but it might be more accurate to say that the book’s main subjects are underachievement, distraction and the afterlife of youth. Love, for which sex appears a synonym, is an arena in which these conditions are indulged and suffered. Two brief stories, “We’re Not Jews” and “My Son the Fanatic”, relate personal dilemmas to the larger contexts of race and religion, and achieve a choked, baffled power; but the pull of the book is towards the exhaustion, laziness and panic of private life as Kureishi conceives it for the newly middle-aged...