Kissing in Manhattan - Hardcover

David Schickler's debut Kissing in Manhattan seems at first to be a lot of fun: a gaggle of young Manhattanites with fancy jobs and fine educations chase each other around town, falling in love--or not as the case may be. In a series of linked stories, Schickler gives us a perverted heiress; a bumbling schoolteacher whose teenage student proposes marriage to him, a bad comic who finds his metier in off-off-Broadway theatre. The writing is somewhat willfully naïve: "Rally McWilliams was profoundly lonely", begins the title story. "She wanted to believe that she had a soul mate, a future spouse gestating somewhere in Nepal or the Australian Outback. But in Manhattan, where Rally lived, all she found were guys."

The mood turns dark, however, with the introduction of Patrick, a 30ish Wall Street trader who collects women and spends his evenings tying them up in his room. In short order the book's easy comedy torques into something more dramatic by Patrick's descent into violence. That Schickler doesn't play to his strengths is not necessarily a bad thing: one admires a writer who reaches beyond facility to something more difficult. But the transition from light-hearted sexual commentary to dirty realism is a bit bumpy. On the other hand, the novel's picture of a dark, desire-ridden Manhattan is an attractively seductive slice of escapism. The linked-stories format gives rise to a feeling of multiplicity, which is just the right tone for a book about a city crowded with pleasures. Describing James, a lovestruck young accountant, Schickler writes:

His mind tonight was on the fine and the illicit pleasures of the planet, on their merits and dispersement. Some people cut daisies, thought James. Some visit Wales, or choose cocaine, or dig latrines for the poor and the weak.

Everyone, it seems, is after something different. But it's desire itself that interests the author of Kissing in Manhattan. --Claire Dederer, Amazon.com

'Inventive and entertaining' Independent on Sunday

'The literary equivalent of the sexual tease' Marie Claire

'As smart as you'd expect from the title, but also sometimes touching' Time Out

'Stylishly sexy and taking sensuously serpentine twists and turns that keep you guessing and laughing out loud...his witty stories are as cool and seductive as a well-chilled glass of vintage champagne' Glasgow Herald

'It is hard not to be touched by the imagination at work in these stories' Metro

'Stylish...witty and original' Mail on Sunday

'Wonderful...a wry, witty take on the emotional lives of single and not-so-single Manhattanites. Where SEX AND THE CITY is one track, KISSING IN MANHATTAN is as varied as the freaks, poseurs and nerds who inhabit the world's most famous island. David Schickler...never fails to spot the secrets and silences of modern urban relationships. Popular writing at its elegant best' Eve

'A collection of modern fairy tales with a distinctive, ironic twist' Red

'Stylish, witty and deviant...a twisted fairytale of New York. Full of sly surprises, it's a wicked dip into an exotic world' Daily Express

'Schickler has a knack for injecting the everyday with a dose of the extraordinary...Schickler's pared-down prose is slick, his narrative a well-tailored treat' Literary Review