Praise for 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 Strauss, author of Chang and Eng