Gloriously creepy
is the only way to describe Londoner Lottie Moggach’s debut novel Kiss Me First (Picador). It’s a piece of
fiction that could only have been written right now, at this point in the life
of the Internet, as a younger generation grow accustomed to having much of
their meaningful human contact online. And in a way it’s a fairly grim vision
of how that might affect them.
Leila is an
isolated young woman. Her mother has died and she’s living alone in a grim flat
in a part of London where she knows no one. She has over 70 friends on
Facebook, none in real-life. But Leila doesn’t mind being by herself. She works
at home as a software tester and spends her free time online playing World Of Warcraft or posting her
thoughts on a philosophy site called Red Pill.
It is through Red
Pill that Leila makes contact with the charismatic and mysterious Adrian Dervish.
He flatters her by elevating her to the status of Elite Thinker on his website
and then, in a face-to-face meeting, puts a proposal to her. Would she be
prepared to help someone commit suicide? Not by providing pills or in any way
doing the deed but by continuing their online life beyond death so that friends
and family won’t know what’s happened and can be spared immediate grief.
Ok so not very
likely but if the reader can put that aside, Moggach rewards them with an
intriguing and utterly gripping read.
Tess, the girl who
wants to die, is everything Leila is not - pretty, sexy and popular. But she is
also bi-polar, veering from manic highs to deep depression. Counselling hasn’t
helped and drugs make her feel only half alive. She doesn’t want to go on.
To assume her
online identity Leila must know everything possible about Tess. It becomes her
fulltime job to build up a profile, poring over her photographs, reading her
emails, talking via Skype. Soon she is closer to her than she is to anyone else
even though they have never met.
Leila is eccentric
all right, super-brainy, cold, out of step with the world, tuned out to other
people’s feelings. But as she “becomes” Tess it changes her in ways she hadn’t
expected.
Most of us will
have met someone a bit like Leila. The Internet has opened up a whole new world
for these super-bright, socially awkward people but also made them more
vulnerable and Moggach’s novel is an exploration of the possibilities for
disaster.
She examines the
way we live online, the fake versions of ourselves we present, the slipperiness
and unreliability of identity.
Since she is the
daughter of writer Deborah Moggach (The
Best Exotic Marigold Hotel), the author has a literary pedigree but her
style is quite different. This is an intense, darkly humorous piece of fiction
with a finger right on the pulse of the Internet Age. It disturbs and
entertains in equal measure.
About the reviewer.
Nicky Pellegrino, an Auckland-based author of popular fiction, is also the Books Editor of the Herald on Sunday where the above review was first published on Sunday 25 August 2013.
Her latest novel When In Rome is set in 1950's Italy and was published in September 2012. Her next novel, The Food Of Love Cooking School, will be published here next month.
About the reviewer.
Nicky Pellegrino, an Auckland-based author of popular fiction, is also the Books Editor of the Herald on Sunday where the above review was first published on Sunday 25 August 2013.
Her latest novel When In Rome is set in 1950's Italy and was published in September 2012. Her next novel, The Food Of Love Cooking School, will be published here next month.
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