Kiss & Tell [Hardcover]

Alain De Botton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1996

Dr. Samuel Johnson observed that everyone's life is a subject worthy of the biographer's art. The narrator of Kiss & Tell takes this idea to heart, and decides to write about the next person who walks into his life: Isabel Rogers, apparently an ordinary woman. But as the biographer's understanding of Isabel deepens, her smallest quirks, private habits and opinions become worthy of the most painstaking investigation--and unexpectedly attractive to her biographer.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Alain de Botton has crafted a delightfully ingenious novel in the form of a biography of an unknown woman. Told by a former flame that he lacks empathy, the engaging narrator of Kiss & Tell decides to write a book about the next person he meets. This turns out to be Isabel Rogers, a production assistant at a London stationery company. The sincere effort of this would-be Boswell to make this ordinary woman fascinating cause him to fall in love with her, causing a shift in his writing from an examination of Isabel's life to a minutely-detailed account of his relationship with her. Alain de Botton's earlier work, The Romantic Movement, garnered praise from John Updike and Pico Iyer, who called him "a Stendhal of the 90's dating scene."

From Publishers Weekly

"Dental work on," "first kiss" and "new hairstyle" can all be found under the index entries for Isabel Rogers, the charming, unsuspecting subject of this diverting fictional biography. De Botton plays a nimble game, through the eyes and idiosyncrasies of his smart, pretentious narrator. Looking for an opportunity to explore the nature of biography without being overshadowed by his subject, the narrator attaches himself to a woman he thinks will be mundane enough to be fully mastered. To play off the appealing if thoroughly normal Isabel, de Botton (The Romantic Movement) makes his narrator as fastidious as any of Nicholson Baker's and as smarmily self-absorbed as one of Martin Amis's. But the ordinary details of Isabel's ordinary life?she is 28, a production assistant in London?prove more than enough to handle, and the narrator, who likes to quote Dr. Johnson and Richard Ellman, finds that the high-brow rigors of formal biography have to make concessions to the unruliness of lived life. Inevitably in this comic relationship, the narrator digresses too often, experimenting with handwriting analysis, palmistry and psychiatric questionnaires before he realizes that he is missing a very different kind of understanding of Isabel. Deftly, de Botton manages to flesh out the character of Isabel within the parameters of what is?in every sense?his narrator's pseudo-intellectual conceit. In the manner of Carol Shield's The Stone Diaries, photos of "Isabel" and her family add a droll touch.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 257 pages
• Publisher: Picador USA; 1st Picador USA ed edition (June 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031214282X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312142827
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #924,654 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Alain is the author of seven non-fiction books that look at the great questions of ordinary life - love, friendship, work, travel, home - in a way that is intellectually rigorous, therapeutic, amusing and always highly readable. His goal is to bring ideas back to where they belong: at the center of our lives.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Brilliant de Botton Book, September 9, 1999

By 

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Kiss & Tell (Paperback)

Outstanding fictional examination of how we perceive each other as humans as well as the art and form of biography. The narrator, derided as being self-absorbed, decides to write a biography of the next person he meets. Thus, we are treated to his attempt to do this with "Isabel", a young London woman he meets at a party. De Botton spins it all with a very light, often comic, touch, and yet manages to raise some fairly deep issues relating to how our perceptions of others are formed and shape our actions. Very good stuff which makes me want to find his other work and read it immediately. Fans of "High Fidelity" will likely find this a slightly higher-brow, but very enjoyable book. See also "On Love" and "The Romantic Movement."

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The dangers of dating a writer/philosopher, December 27, 2002

By 

Charles S. Houser (Binghamton, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Kiss & Tell (Paperback)

After finishing Alain de Botton's biography/novel KISS AND TELL, I found myself hoping on behalf of its putative subject Isabel Jane Rogers that this work is more fiction than fact. Or at least that "Isabel" is a composite of every young woman the author ever dated and not a real individual person. Although de Botton catalogs many of "Isabel's" quirky habits (her poor sense of geography, the way she picks her nose and chews on the callouses on her fingers, etc.), he exhibits enough of his own dubious traits (for instance, he admits letting her plants die unwatered while devouring half a box of her chocolates while house-sitting for her one time) to give us a sense that in some unprovable way, he is at least playing fair.

But under this delicious patina of pettiness, there are a number of more serious subjects. Such as the nature of biography itself. And whether our versions of ourselves are any more reliable than those of an outside observer. The nature of memory. And a comparison of the virtues and liabilities of the fat, detail-obsessed Boswelian biographies versus the "toast-sized", summary-style biographical sketches of an Aubrey. (Anyone who has read--or tried to write--an obituary for a family member will find the chapter "In Search of an Ending" fascinating.) And anyone who is familiar with de Botton's other works will not be surprised how he manages to draw the likes of Marcel Proust, Adam Smith, Frederick Nietzsche, Tolstoy, and Hippocrates into the conversation, as well as zany bits of pop psychology like graphology, palmistry, and magazine personality questionnaires. To support the trope that KISS AND TELL is a real biography, de Botton even provides a 12-page, fully functioning index (complete with entries on "toenails" and "sex.") As a work of fiction, KISS AND TELL isn't nearly as interesting as his earlier novel, ON LOVE, but it is an amusing book...and it will make you think about your own quirks and self-delusions.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amusing breath of air..., May 11, 2002

By 

Celestejz (CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kiss & Tell (Paperback)

Okay, I may have not read the *entire* book, but I did read a spectacular passage from "Kiss and Tell" during my AP Literature and Composition exam. It's not often I grin after reading AP test passages. However, that brief excertp from De Bottom's novel had me grinning and absolutely praising whatever AP God had seen fit to bless me w/ such a delightful passage to write about.

I was so intrigued by the passage, I actually decided to buy the book after I was done. (How often does that happen?)