Kiss Me First

Finished September 7

Kiss Me First by Lottie Moggach

I found this novel hard to classify into a genre. The narrator is Leila, a young woman who has felt that she doesn't fit in most of her life. She was raised by her mother, but her mother was diagnosed with MS, and died when Leila was a young woman. 

The book begins with an online conversation she has with a woman called Tess, which she describes as the last conversation that she would have with her. 

The next section is dated in August 2011 where Leila is at a commune in Spain. She is living in a tent and has gone there looking for Tess. While she is there she has decided to "write an account of everything that has happened'. And that is what this novel's structure is. As a reader, I felt a bit like I'd come into the middle of a story, as Leila talks about people she's interacted with and describes her life and the situation that she entered into with Tess.

Leila hadn't gone to college, and the two made a plan for her future together. Leila would do online training for computer coding and they would sell the house and buy an apartment for her to live in when it came time for her to live by herself. 

One thing that Leila was interested in was philosophy, and she found her way to a site called Red Pill where she discussed philosophical questions. There she interacted with a man called Adrian who offered her a job he calls "Project Tess" where she will get to know Tess, a woman who wants to disappear from her life, so that Leila can interact with people Tess knows later once Tess is gone. Tess is a little older than Leila, but still a young woman, and as Leila lays out her interactions with Adrian and with Tess, we get a sense of the unusual situation that this is. 

To me, Leila seemed bright in some areas of her life, but very naive in others. She also seems to have a lack of emotions at times when it would be normal to show emotion. 

As the story unfolds, and we see Leila's business-like and organized approach to this job, we get a sense of what her own life is like and how she has trouble connecting with people in real life. 

A strange and intriguing look inside someone else's head. Some have labeled the book as mystery or suspense, and I can see aspects of that, but it is also a sort of dark character study of the narrator as we get to know so much about her and how she thinks. 

Polly Fulton

Finished April 17

Polly Fulton by John P. Marquand

I heard of this book when I was reading The Trouble with You by Ellen Feldman. The main character in that book mentioned some of her favourite reads and I decide to track a few down. This is one of them. The book is really interesting. It is a character study of a woman in her thirties, set during World War II. Polly Brett, nee Fulton is a woman who was born wealthy to parents who were born middle class. Her father had good instincts, and an eye for machines and created a small empire. He was friendly and talkative and took people at face value. He also was a good judge of character in some ways, and wanted his daughter and son to be happy. 

Polly was sent to a private girls' boarding school where she blossomed after a short time going to a school nearer to home where she struggled to fit in. She went on to Bryn Mawr College, and after some time at home married. 

Her marriage is a big part in the novel as is her relationship with her father, B.F. She is close to both of her parents in different ways. She is comfortable in the world that her father operates in, and intelligent and informed enough to hold her own in conversation. 

As the book opens, Polly has made a sudden decision to go to her country home in the Berkshires. It is winter and snowing, yet she is both testing her staff at the house to see if they are keeping the house ready at all times, and able to pay the high rates she must pay to get there when she wants to. The house evokes both memories of different times earlier in her marriage, as well as times before then as she looks through old scrapbooks. 

A crisis with her father's health helps these thoughts along as he speaks to her of her husband, the life he wanted her to have, and the man he thought she should marry, Bob Tasmin. 

While the major part of the novel is written from Polly's viewpoint, there is some written from Bob's as well, and this is critical to what unfolds later. 

Polly has come to understand that her husband is cheating on her, and rather than turn her head the other way as many women of her time and station do, she decides to face it head on, with a real effort to understand the situation. This also forces her to understand herself better and that is the revelation of the novel and its core. 

I really enjoyed the dry humour here, as well as the character of Polly herself. I'm so glad I was led to this novel.