Swiss Kissing

Synopsis

A first kiss in the Swiss Alps. A musician in 1980s New York. A charismatic acting teacher. A famous actor twice her age.

New Year’s Eve, 1976.

Ten-year-old Poppy meets a Yorkshire boy in the Swiss Alps, and over the next three winters they experience first love. It is a love whose echo follows her long after childhood ends.

As she grows up, Poppy moves through punk-era London, New York’s downtown music scene, drama school, addiction, recovery, artistic ambition and a series of relationships that promise reinvention. Beneath the exhilaration runs a darker story of family shame, longing and the struggle to understand who she is.

Spanning four decades and three countries, Swiss Kissing is a voice-driven novel about first love, memory, identity and the stories we inherit about ourselves.

Praise for This Book

‘Like the stories of Lorrie Moore, or the writings of Lucia Berlin, the deep truths Yasmine Lever’s book contains about addiction, about psychic entanglement, about longing, and love, and paralysis, and fear, are delivered with such deftness and lightness of touch that they catch you completely off-guard. I adore this novel – I’m envious of anyone getting to read it for the first time.’ —Lucy Caldwell