Kiss and Tell

出版者:Picador

作者:[英] 阿兰·德波顿

页数:288 pages

出版时间:1996-4

价格:GBP 6.99

装帧:Paperback

isbn号码:9780330347594

具体描述

Amazon.com

Alain de Botton has crafted a delightfully ingenious novel in the form of a biography of an unknown woman. Told by a former flame that he lacks empathy, the engaging narrator of Kiss & Tell decides to write a book about the next person he meets. This turns out to be Isabel Rogers, a production assistant at a London stationery company. The sincere effort of this would-be Boswell to make this ordinary woman fascinating cause him to fall in love with her, causing a shift in his writing from an examination of Isabel's life to a minutely-detailed account of his relationship with her. Alain de Botton's earlier work, The Romantic Movement, garnered praise from John Updike and Pico Iyer, who called him "a Stendhal of the 90's dating scene." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

"Dental work on," "first kiss" and "new hairstyle" can all be found under the index entries for Isabel Rogers, the charming, unsuspecting subject of this diverting fictional biography. De Botton plays a nimble game, through the eyes and idiosyncrasies of his smart, pretentious narrator. Looking for an opportunity to explore the nature of biography without being overshadowed by his subject, the narrator attaches himself to a woman he thinks will be mundane enough to be fully mastered. To play off the appealing if thoroughly normal Isabel, de Botton (The Romantic Movement) makes his narrator as fastidious as any of Nicholson Baker's and as smarmily self-absorbed as one of Martin Amis's. But the ordinary details of Isabel's ordinary life?she is 28, a production assistant in London?prove more than enough to handle, and the narrator, who likes to quote Dr. Johnson and Richard Ellman, finds that the high-brow rigors of formal biography have to make concessions to the unruliness of lived life. Inevitably in this comic relationship, the narrator digresses too often, experimenting with handwriting analysis, palmistry and psychiatric questionnaires before he realizes that he is missing a very different kind of understanding of Isabel. Deftly, de Botton manages to flesh out the character of Isabel within the parameters of what is?in every sense?his narrator's pseudo-intellectual conceit. In the manner of Carol Shield's The Stone Diaries, photos of "Isabel" and her family add a droll touch.

Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

After an ex-girlfriend accuses the narrator of being a narcissist, he decides to find out as much as possible about the next person he meets. Fortunately she, in the form of Isabel Jane Rogers, proves to be a woman of many layers. Intrigued by the biographer's mission, the unnamed narrator plunges into Isabel's life, creating a laundry list of minutiae--such as how she learned to make the figure 8, her first bubble bath, candies eaten as a child, and how she cleans her apartment to The Best of Blondie music--all to gain insight, reformulate prejudices, and grow empathic. Along the way, he consults other biographies for direction. An index (unusual in a fictional work) draws out details from the lives of Samuel Johnson, Marcel Proust, and James Joyce, among others. Readers who enjoy biographies must not miss Kiss & Tell. It provides insight into the genre while also presenting bit by nonchronological bit the ordinary albeit captivating life of Isabel Jane Rogers. Jennifer Henderson --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

A young, self-centered British swain vows to get to know the next woman he meets better than she knows herself, in de Botton's self-consciously coy follow-up to On Love (1993) and The Romantic Movement (1995). ``It took me a long time to . . . understand how someone could have been so un-self-aware and at the same time so self-obsessed,'' reads the narrator's most recent Dear John letter. ``You said you loved me, but a narcissist can't love anyone but himself.'' Miffed by the accusation, de Botton's intellectual hero determines not just to pay more attention to the next woman he meets but to immerse himself in her life as assiduously as a biographer studies his subject. Ordinary as that randomly picked woman turns out to be--pretty, 25-year-old Isabel Rogers is a production assistant for a stationery company--our hero earnestly commits to paper every thought she expresses, every casual mannerism, every minor anecdote about her childhood, in the hopes of proving himself worthy of love. At first, Isabel is flattered by such attention, though she wisely attributes her biographer's attentions to ordinary lust. As the months pass and the narrator charts Isabel's ancestral tree, challenges her with personality quizzes, and gravely ponders such inscrutable utterances as ``I know I should read more, but TV is easier. I should love people who are nice to me, but grumps are more of a challenge . . . I want to have babies, but I'm frightened of becoming my mother,'' he increasingly gets on her nerves- -proving, inevitably, that too much attention can be as irritating as too little. ``And I think we should stop seeing one another as well,'' Isabel continues. ``But unfortunately I can't be sure about that either. I don't know any more, all right?'' Having stuck with this one-joke plot that is, like its narrator, amusing and tedious by turns, readers will understand her fond impatience all too well. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Original, intelligent, and beguiling . . . You will get more than pure pleasure from reading...you may never again look at biography in quite the same way."—Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World

"This ingenious, and even wise, novel elicits an almost continuous smile."—The New Yorker

"An impressively ambitious book . . . More than just an offbeat romantic comedy--it's a provocative meditation on the essence of personality and the nature of the biographer's task."—Michael Upchurch, The San Francisco Chronicle

"Playful and adroit...a sometimes essayistic, often funny meditation on biographical form which has at its root universal and problematic questions of how we know ourselves, and how we begin to understand others."—Sara Kramer, Boston Review

"Shows ingenuity. De Botton makes some witty and arch observations about the twentysomething English generation and its culture. Isabel may be alarmingly ordinary, but in his hands she is also fascinating."—Greg Morago, The Hartford Courant

"Engaging and delightful...Such a writer could write the biography of a broomstick, as Dr. Johnson suggested, and it would come alive under his pen."—Philip Glazebrook, The Spectator

"Rich, intelligent, and finely written...Alain De Botton provides not merely an engaging suburban love story, but a lip-smackingly irreverent take on the entire biographical genre."—Paul Sussman, The Independent on Sunday

"Brilliantly erudite and amusing...De Botton is the boy wonder of contemporary English literature. What gives his novels their considerable charm is his winning combination of candor and intellect."—The Tatler

"Genuinely funny...perceptive...cheerfully wrought...De Botton's prose is an arm wrestle of erudition with popular culture...His writing is endearing, not in the least remote, and attempts to return value and sophistication to a currency--the ever-Austenesque minuet of courtship and love."—Rachel Cusk, The Times

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"Happy . . . clever debunking of biographical objectivity."—James Atlas, Vogue

Review

"Original, intelligent, and beguiling . . . You will get more than pure pleasure from reading...you may never again look at biography in quite the same way."—Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World

"This ingenious, and even wise, novel elicits an almost continuous smile."—The New Yorker

"An impressively ambitious book . . . More than just an offbeat romantic comedy--it's a provocative meditation on the essence of personality and the nature of the biographer's task."—Michael Upchurch, The San Francisco Chronicle

"Playful and adroit...a sometimes essayistic, often funny meditation on biographical form which has at its root universal and problematic questions of how we know ourselves, and how we begin to understand others."—Sara Kramer, Boston Review

"Shows ingenuity. De Botton makes some witty and arch observations about the twentysomething English generation and its culture. Isabel may be alarmingly ordinary, but in his hands she is also fascinating."—Greg Morago, The Hartford Courant

"Engaging and delightful...Such a writer could write the biography of a broomstick, as Dr. Johnson suggested, and it would come alive under his pen."—Philip Glazebrook, The Spectator

"Rich, intelligent, and finely written...Alain De Botton provides not merely an engaging suburban love story, but a lip-smackingly irreverent take on the entire biographical genre."—Paul Sussman, The Independent on Sunday

"Brilliantly erudite and amusing...De Botton is the boy wonder of contemporary English literature. What gives his novels their considerable charm is his winning combination of candor and intellect."—The Tatler

"Genuinely funny...perceptive...cheerfully wrought...De Botton's prose is an arm wrestle of erudition with popular culture...His writing is endearing, not in the least remote, and attempts to return value and sophistication to a currency--the ever-Austenesque minuet of courtship and love."—Rachel Cusk, The Times

"Happy . . . clever debunking of biographical objectivity."—James Atlas, Vogue

Product Description

Dr. Samuel Johnson observed that everyone's life is a subject worthy of the biographer's art. Accused by a former girlfriend of being unable to empathize, the narrator of Kiss & Tell takes Johnson's idea to heart and decides to write about the next person who walks into his life.

He meets Isabel Rogers, a production assistant at a small stationery company in London, apparently an ordinary woman. But as the biographer's understanding of Isabel deepens, she becomes remarkable. Her smallest quirks, private habits, and opinions become worthy of the most painstaking investigation—and unexpectedly attractive to her biographer.

作者简介

Alain De Botton was born in Switzerland in 1969, educated at Cambridge, and lives in London. He is the author of The Romantic Movement (Picador) and How Proust Can Change Your Life. His first novel, On Love, was published in fifteen countries, and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Fiction.

读后感

这本内容为给女朋友写传记的小说，议论气息太重，也不是随笔，总有点四不像的感觉。 平常人的生平，没人关心，更不会有人为其立传。传记写的大多是名人的一生。若非什么有名的人物，一个人的自传大概不会引起任何人的任何兴趣，除了作者自己，再不会有人耽溺其中。就算是亲密如...  

写好人生也许和过好人生一样难。传记作家对传记主人公的兴趣是一个人对另一个人少有的，“假如你不爱他们，你就不会追随他们----至少不会追随很远”。理解别人就是一个最普通但复杂而又有趣的过程。 渴望了解别人的好奇心是避开自省的好方法----你可以用被允许引用、描写的...  

这是我看德波顿的第一本书。好像不是一个好的开始。 有过这样一个访问： 完了？ 完了。 就这些？ 就这些。 这是小说吗？ 我写的小说实际上不是真正的小说，只是当作小说卖的。我写的都是论说文体的东西。 很可惜，这段文字是出现在 后记，而非 引言 之中。 所以，我还是抱...  

看完很多电影，读完很多书，交谈很多陌生人，之后，你不得不认同，每一个人的情感体验都是相似的。 我避讳了经历相似一说，因为成功失败的人生终究有所不同。然而，情感体验——哭笑喜怒嗔痴爱怨的确是人人尝遍。 会再度引发这一感慨，缘于刚读的一本书，阿兰·德波顿写的《亲...  

写好人生也许和过好人生一样难。传记作家对传记主人公的兴趣是一个人对另一个人少有的，“假如你不爱他们，你就不会追随他们----至少不会追随很远”。理解别人就是一个最普通但复杂而又有趣的过程。 渴望了解别人的好奇心是避开自省的好方法----你可以用被允许引用、描写的...  

用户评价

《Kiss and Tell》这本书，给我留下了非常深刻的印象。它的叙事角度非常新颖，作者采用了不同于传统的回忆录或编年体的方式，而是将故事碎片化，然后像拼图一样，让读者自己去感受和拼接。这种叙事方式非常具有挑战性，但也充满了魅力。它要求读者付出更多的思考和专注，但当你最终将所有碎片连接起来时，那种成就感是无与伦比的。我特别喜欢作者在文字中流露出的那种真诚和坦率，她不回避现实的残酷，也不掩饰人性的复杂，而是以一种非常真实的方式，展现了生活中的点点滴滴。这本书的语言风格非常贴近生活，没有过多的修饰，却充满了力量，能够直接触动人心。故事中的人物，并没有高大全的形象，他们都有着自己的缺点和挣扎，但正是这种不完美，才让他们显得如此真实和可爱。这本书让我看到了作者非凡的叙事能力，她能够在一个看似杂乱无章的故事线索中，找到逻辑的脉络，并最终呈现出一个完整而深刻的故事。它不仅仅是一部读物，更像是一次心灵的对话，一次对人生和人性的深入探索。

我不得不说，《Kiss and Tell》是一本令人拍案叫绝的作品。这本书的开篇就抓住了我的眼球，用一种非常大胆而直接的方式，将我抛入了一个充满戏剧冲突的情境之中。作者的语言风格犀利而富有力量，每一个词语都仿佛经过了精雕细琢，掷地有声。我特别欣赏作者对于人物塑造的深度，她笔下的角色，无论是主角还是配角，都栩栩如生，拥有鲜明的个性和复杂的内心世界。他们的动机，他们的挣扎，他们的爱恨情仇，都被描绘得淋漓尽致，让人感同身受。这本书的情节设计更是跌宕起伏，扣人心弦，我几乎是屏息凝神地一口气读完了它。作者非常擅长制造紧张感，在故事的推进过程中，不断埋下伏笔，又巧妙地解开谜团，让读者始终保持着高度的期待。读这本书的过程中，我几次因为情节的突变而发出惊叹，这种被情节牢牢抓住的感觉，实在是一种难得的阅读体验。此外，书中对于一些社会现象的探讨也相当深刻，它不仅仅停留在表面的叙事，而是触及了更深层次的社会问题，引人深思。这本书让我看到了作者非凡的想象力和洞察力，它无疑是一部充满智慧和力量的作品，能够激发读者的思考，并让他们对生活有更深的理解。

这次读到的《Kiss and Tell》绝对是一次令人意想不到的旅程。从翻开第一页的那一刻起，我就被深深地吸引住了，仿佛跌入了一个精心编织的网，每一根丝线都充满了张力与神秘。作者的叙事手法非常独特，她不急不缓地铺陈开故事的背景，用细腻的笔触勾勒出人物内心的波澜，那种潜藏在平静表面下的暗流涌动，着实让人心痒难耐。我尤其喜欢作者对环境的描写，每一个场景都仿佛被赋予了生命，读者能够清晰地感受到空气中的温度、光线的变化，甚至能闻到淡淡的香气，这种沉浸式的体验是很多书无法给予的。故事的节奏把握得也相当到位，在适当的时候抛出悬念，又在恰当的时候给出解答，让人既有追逐的动力，又不至于感到过于疲惫。很多情节的转折都出乎我的意料，却又在事后回味时觉得合情合理，这无疑是作者高超的叙事功力。更重要的是，这本书探讨了一些非常深刻的主题，关于信任、背叛、爱情的复杂性，以及我们在成长过程中所面临的种种抉择。它不仅仅是一个关于“Kiss and Tell”的故事，更是一个关于人生、关于选择、关于人性深处的故事。读完之后，我久久不能平静，脑海中不断回响着书中的对话和场景，试图从中汲取更多的意义。这是一本值得反复阅读，并从中获得不同体悟的书。

这次阅读《Kiss and Tell》的体验，可以说是相当的出乎意料。这本书的风格非常鲜明，作者的文字充满了独特的个人魅力，读起来让人感觉非常畅快。它不像市面上很多畅销书那样套路化，而是有着一种别具一格的创新感。我尤其欣赏作者对于故事节奏的掌控，她知道何时应该加速，何时应该放缓，使得整个阅读过程既紧张刺激，又不失从容。这本书的魅力在于其叙事的巧妙，它能够将看似不相关的人物和事件，在故事后期巧妙地串联起来，形成一个完整而令人信服的整体。这种“原来如此”的惊喜感，是阅读过程中最令人愉悦的时刻之一。我也很喜欢书中对细节的刻画，无论是人物的表情、动作，还是环境的描写，都力求真实，让人仿佛亲身经历。这本书让我看到了作者作为一个故事讲述者的老练和智慧，她能够巧妙地引导读者的情绪，让他们随着故事的发展而起伏。更重要的是，这本书并没有给出简单的答案，而是提出了很多值得思考的问题，它鼓励读者去独立思考，去形成自己的判断。这是一种非常健康的阅读方式，也是一本真正有价值的书籍应该具备的特质。

《Kiss and Tell》给我的感觉就像是一杯醇厚的红酒，初入口时也许有些微的辛辣，但随着时间的沉淀，那馥郁的香气和甘甜的滋味便在舌尖缓缓散开，令人回味无穷。这本书的文字有一种独特的韵味，它不像某些作品那样追求华丽的辞藻，而是以朴实而真挚的语言，触动人心最柔软的地方。作者的情感表达非常细腻，她能够捕捉到人物微小的心理变化，并将其转化为动人的文字，让人仿佛置身于角色的内心世界。我特别喜欢书中关于人际关系的处理，那种复杂纠葛，那种欲说还休，都被描绘得恰到好处。它让我看到了在现实生活中，人与人之间的界限是多么模糊，情感是多么难以捉摸。故事的进展并不总是惊涛骇浪，更多的是一种缓缓流淌的叙事，但正是这种平静之下，暗藏着巨大的情感能量。当我读到某些情节时，会不自觉地红了眼眶，又或者会心一笑，仿佛自己也成为了故事中的一员。这本书没有刻意制造的冲突，但它所展现的人性中的善良与脆弱，美好与无奈，足以让我感到震撼。它更像是一面镜子，照出了我们每个人内心深处的某些东西，让我们重新审视自己的情感和选择。

oh,my love

oh,my love

this one is ok

this one is ok

很无厘头。。。。