A breathtaking and stylish debut featuring the Pre-emption, the most glamorous and strange apartment building on earth, and some extraordinary characters: Patrick, the diabolic millionaire with a penchant for nude restraint; Rally, the travel writer lying tied up in Patrick’s bedroom during an unusual party; Jacob and Rachel, whose secret nightly bath is suddenly headline news; Hannah, the nymphomaniac perfume heiress; and Douglas, the teacher who is invited to dinner by his star pupil’s parents, and propositioned.
Manhattan, shaken, a little bit stirred.
Manhattan, shaken, a little bit stirred.
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Reviews
'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
'The most enjoyable collection of short stories I've read in a long time' Patrick Marber, Guardian
'With it's dark twists and casually affluent setting, it could just as easily be SEINFELD as scripted by Roald Dahl' Guardian
'Schickler takes all those glamorous tales of romance and adds a brutal, funny twist...Treacherously stylish, enticingly glossy, but dagger sharp...Not for the faint of heart' Elle
'Clever, darkly comic and full of rich detailing, these stories achieve a near perfect mesh and herald the arrival of a major...talent' I-D Magazine
Magic...Kissing In Manhattan thrums with humour and pain, glamour and danger
'Stylish...old-world glamour with edgy modern depravity. Memorably quirky characters, deftly rendered...accumulate into a compressed portrayal of urban peculiarity' Big Issue
'An absurd, surreal and hauntingly beautiful narrative, within a New York that, in the tradition of Woody Allen, Tama Janowitz and Jay McInerney, is both universal and uniquely personal' W Magazine
'Do you recall...that feeling deep in the pit of your stomach, when everything felt perfect, good, tingling and right? That's how this reviewer felt after finishing this exuberantly well thought out, thinking man's literary masterpiece. Strong words? You bet...' AintItCool.com
'Schickler made his big-ticket debut in last year's New Yorker Summer Debut Fiction issue, which has become the equivalent of a kiss from God for legions of aspiring Eggersians [and] his book's been hovering just under the radar of many a literary follower ever since...[It's] full of gently quirky characters (including an actor, an heiress, a priest and a Wall Streeter) -- is ...an engaging, sweet-natured morality tale and a comic romance, a secular Canterbury Tales set in that best of all possible cities' Inside.com
'Schickler is a fabulist for the 21st century, a skewed Scheherazade' Publishers' Weekly
'Stylish and deadpan in delivery, Schickler's stories button-hole you from the very first sentence...More Roald Dahl than Raymond Carver, Schickler's tales of the unexpected are just that: unexpectedly pervy, funny and un-PC' Independent
'A darkly comic fable about the hunt for true love' US News
'[A] charming and memorable debut' Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
'Schickler has written a delightfully twisted, one-of-a-kind book in which New York is an infernal funhouse. For lack of a better label, we could call this a divine comedy' San Francisco Chronicle
'Surprising, touching, erotic, disturbing, infuriating...An affecting and original debut' Daily Mail
'Very funny, worth treasuring and reading again' Good Book Guide
'Schickler...is a master of the quirky detail...A small treat' Sunday Herald
'A divine comedy' San Francisco Chronicle
'Finishing this novel is like reaching the end of a short but intense love affair...darkly humorous, romantic, absurd and edgy...an outstanding debut' The List