Kissing in Manhattan

Forget mere sex and the city... Kissing in Manhattan features die-hard romantic strivers in a surreal turn-of-the-millennium New York ruled by the spirit of improbable happy endings. -- The New York Times Book Review Schickler has a wild, out-of-left-field dramatic imagination that's really fresh. The way his characters take you, as well as one another, by surprise is terrific fun. -- New York magazine Like figures in a strange, spiky, urban frieze, the characters of Schickler's striking debut novel-in-stories pose, strut and cross paths in a darkly romantic, surreal Manhattan. ... Schickler is a fabulist for the 21st century, a skewed Scheherazade. -- Publishers Weekly One of the most charming and memorable debuts this year is Kissing in Manhattan.... Tenderness and darkness are around every corner ... There are Gothic overtones, bits of magical realism, moments of true eroticism with hints of danger.... This tender, lovely book and these love-starved and hopeful individuals linger like a reader's dream. -- The New Orleans Times-Picayune With these wonderfully haunting, strange, and hilarious stories, David Schickler has established himself as a major new voice in American fiction. -- Ron Hansen, author of Mariette in Ecstasy and Hitler's Niece Schickler's playfully alive voice is uniquely his own -- sprightly, exact, Herculean in all the fundamentals. What talent! From beginning to end, here you have some of the most pleasurable storytelling of this -- or any -- year. -- Darin Straus, author of Chang and Eng