Home
/
Fiction
/
French Kissing
French Kissing
Aug 13, 2025 9:53 AM

Author:Catherine Sanderson

French Kissing

Name: Sally Marshall

Status: single mother

Age: 32

Nationality: ten years in France, yet still English through and through

I like: Living in Paris, playing with my daughter Lila (four years old), the company of good friends, the smell of baking bread...

So reads Sally's ad, posted on a French online dating site called Rendez-Vous. Sally left Nicolas, her French boyfriend of ten years and Lila's father, after she discovered that he was having an affair with his secretary. Six months have now passed, and although most of the time she feels as if she's just dashing around like a headless chicken, she's beginning to bounce back. But making a new start is fraught with complications. As she meets freshly single Frédéric for a drink, spends the night with charmer Manu and runs away from ex-pat Marcus, she wonders: can she find a way to reconcile motherhood with single womanhood? To what extent can she keep Lila and her love life separate? And is she truly ready to turn her back on Nicolas?

Reviews

A dizzying ride of suspense and revelation

—— Kathryn Hughes , Guardian

A stealthy hit with staying power . . . thriller-like pacing

—— New York Times

Thirteen Reasons Why is a mystery, eulogy, and ceremony. I know, in the years to come, I will often return to this book

—— Alexie Sherman, author of the award-winning DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN

Readers won't be able to pull themselves away . . .

—— Publishers Weekly

Thirteen Reasons Why is a mystery, eulogy, and ceremony. I know, in the years to come, I will often return to this book

—— Alexie Sherman, author of the award-winning Diary of a Part Time Indian

Readers won't be able to pull themselves away...

—— Publishers Weekly

Fonseca's prose is fluent, confident and often funny ... she has a gift for satire that glimmers through this novel. And a near-perfect ear for nuances of speech. Attachment is ferociously well observed. Both physiologically and socially ... as a first novel, the signs of greater things are clearly there

—— Guardian

Fonseca's voice - poised, particular, exotic - rises above her plot

—— Observer

Her prose is elegant and wry

—— Daily Telegraph

Fonseca's talent lies in describing the texture of daily life: the mango with a 'skin like sunset', the pizza boxes that open 'like laptops' ... she is good on the sweep of history and the cultural climate of previous times ... telling details of character - particularly the male characters, are captured well

—— New Statesman

Isabel Fonseca's slinkily assured debut novel shows a wry appreciation of the complexities of modern love...a novel that presumes to put a woman's mid-life crisis - sexual, spiritual and intellectual - centre stage

—— Emma Hagestadt , Independent

Involving novel

—— Observer

this smart, clammy drama, manages to be both unsettling and touching

—— Guardian

Fabulous and very clever

—— Marilla Frostrup , Psychologies

A witty exploration of the preoccupations of middle age - sex, serious illness, the death of a parent - its main attraction being the voice, at once tough, funny and lonely, of the inimitable Jean.

—— Arminta Wallace , Irish Times

Fonesca's debut novel is a funny, heart rendering account of the virtues of love and desire, confounded against the everyday.

—— www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

Beautifully written

—— Image Magazine

It is expertly written in its way, and oddly compelling - like a slushy movie you can't help but respond to

—— Guardian

Moving and thoughtful ... Poignant and compelling, this lyrical novel lifts the veil on an internal world of love, rivalry and misunderstanding; an intricate depiction of sibling relationships

—— Good Book Guide

A beautifully evocative and intelligent novel

—— Woman & Home

This impassioned tale is a gripping read

—— James Smart , The Guardian

Jones is fabulous...offering titbits of danger and discord, yet keeping a cool matter-of-fact tone for the big horrors

—— Sunday Times

Her second novel is a must-read; a devastating, brilliant account of what happens when everything a man believes in...begins to crumble

—— Cath Kidson Magazine

Full of danger and discord

—— Sunday Times Summer Reading
Comments
Welcome to zzdbook comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.zzdbook.com All Rights Reserved