Hanif Kureishi’s “Intimacy” and Jeanette Winterson’s “The Green Man” are very similar stories. Both stories are told in first person and revolve around the narrator’s thoughts and feelings, especially the implicit sexual thoughts. The men are both are fathers and husbands. They don’t like their life and they are being emasculated by their wives.
The stories differ with the age and gender of the children. In “The Green Man”, the man’s child is a thirteen-year-old girl. In “Intimacy”, the children are boys, age five and three. The love the men feel for their children is the same in both stories. This shows that the love you feel for your children is same, no matter the situation, especially when you are in the middle of a life-changing event.
In “The Green Man”, the narrator is in middle of a mid-life crisis, which was brought on by him thinking about his daughter’s age. In “Intimacy”, the narrator is planning to leave his wife and children because he has been cheating on his wife.