Words by Britt Pflüger
Literary scout, agent and literary consultant at Hardy & Knox www.hardyandknox.com
KISS ME FIRST By: Lottie Moggach
“’I’m scared.’ ‘What about?’ ‘I’m so scared. Do you understand?’ ‘Of course.’ ‘Can I see you?’ ‘’I----‘ ‘Switch on your camera.’ ‘I think it’s best if we don’t.’ ‘I want to see you. You get to see me.’ ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea.’ ‘I can’t do it.’ ‘Of course you can.’” Picador 4 July 2013 288pp £14.99
With Kiss Me First, billed as ‘The Talented Mr Ripley for the digital age’, Deborah Moggach’s daughter’s marks her debut as psychological thriller author. Leila has recently lost her mother after a long struggle with MS. At twentythree, she suddenly finds herself in a shabby flat above an Indian restaurant in South East London, friendless and without real aim. Leila has always been a loner, brought up by her single mother and then caring for her during her terminal illness. Never even been kissed. So when she stumbles across Red Pill, a philosophy website run by American Adrian Dervish, she finally feels as though she is connecting with other people, albeit via the virtual medium of their online forum. Then, out of the blue, Adrian suggest they meet. Adrian makes Leila feel special, intelligent and worthy, and confides in her that his wife too suffered from MS. Asks her how she feels about assisted suicide before telling her about Tess, a woman in her late thirties with a long history of depression who wants to kill herself while sparing her family from grief. Having established that Leila supports assisted suicide, he explains that Tess is looking for someone to impersonate her online after her death in order to keep the fact that she is dead from her friends and family. And she is prepared to pay for it. Partly because she is seduced by Adrian’s charm, partly because she needs the money, Leila agrees and quickly sets about her task. After Adrian puts the two women in touch with each other via email and Skype, Leila, in her trademark methodical fashion, compiles as much data as possible about Tess’ life in order to be able to impersonate her online. As it turns out, Tess is a charismatic but troubled woman with a chaotic past: bipolar, promiscuous, artistic, with a complicated family history. Soon Leila’s walls are covered with charts, timelines and names, but Tess’ mercurial nature makes it
difficult to pin her down, and the two women could not be more different: sensible, socially inept Leila versus passionate, chaotic Tess. The one thing they never talk about is ‘check-out day’, the date on which Tess will take her own life. Leila has decided that ‘virtual’ Tess will move to Sointula, a small island off the coast of Vancouver, difficult to reach and thus a deterrent to those amongst her friends and family who might be tempted to visit. And so, once ‘check-out day’ has passed, Leila devotes all her waking hours to maintain a convincing online presence pretending to be Tess. But then someone whom Tess has never mentioned sends her a cryptic email, and events take a sinister turn... There is much to recommend here, not least Leila’s portrayal as the naive but well-meaning loner who not only becomes Adrian’s perfect victim but falls hopelessly in love with a guy whose object of desire is the very woman whose identity she has taken over. Tess is equally convincing as the troubled woman who can no longer face life and seems unaware that her family, dysfunctional as they may be, love her and will miss her. Kiss Me First has all the hallmarks of a psychological thriller bestseller, not least a very clever structure - the novel opens with Leila’s arrival in Spain and works its way backwards, thus revealing only gradually how socially inept and unworldly she is - and the mystery surrounding Tess’ fate which runs through the entire narrative, complete with plenty of twists and turns. Disturbing and compelling in equal measures, this is a tightly plotted and irresistible debut which packs a hefty punch. One of those rare beasts: a true page turner.
www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk