Kissing in Manhattan by David Schickler
By no means new but still entirely relevant for the romantic in us all, Kissing in Manhattan is a happy reminder and celebration of everyone’s innate eccentricities. More importantly, it is a refreshing account from a male author in a world of overly saturated “chick-lit” that can sometimes make this particular reviewer want to hide under her beach towel when confronted with cover after cover of the latest Confessions of a Bridget Jones and Gossip Girl’s Guide to the Devil wearing Something Borrowed and Something Blue. Or whatever.
Mentioning our beloved University within the first few pages, Schickler’s stories take place in a variety of locales but eventually settle in the city of the title’s naming. Characters brilliantly intertwine and overlap, creating stories that reveal both the glamorous and the not-so-glamorous aspects of romance, be it a hidden penchant for late night baths or odd accounts of bondage in penthouse suites. Each story allows us a brief glimpse of being a part of one particular romance with both its dregs and delicious gulps of what it means to be in love in our modern world.
What I love best about Schickler’s characters is that they are never perfectly encapsulated by a single word or even a single feeling – despite the featured protagonist’s mildly psychopathic tendencies, you can’t help but feeling bad for him after learning about his troubled and absurd childhood tragedy. Characters are never simply “good” or “evil” but are as complicated as one would expect coming from the city that never sleeps.
While his tales sometimes veer towards the more mystic and surreal, Schickler never forgets to ground the absurd in tactile details of truth that might hit closer to home than we’d like to admit.
Escape the typical paperback romantic dreck – here are a few others for your arsenal:
The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis
Amis’s sweaty accounts of first love will make you both laugh and cringe with the precocious protagonist Charles’s every move. Read this and tell me it doesn’t encompass exactly everything that is right and wrong with first love (or first lust, at least).
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
Not unlike watching a car crash, Dunn’s fictional account of a family that purposely creates real life freak show babies (it’s not just a “Glee” quote!) can be almost too much to take at times but is more than worth the exercise in patience. Keep it on your shelf, but high enough to keep out of the reach of children.
Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart
While 2012 is usually purported as the year of the apocalypse, Shteyngart has already sent it raining down upon us in his unforgiving account of modern love in a post-modern world.
