SOURCE: Glazebrook, Philip. “Portrait of a Lady and Little Else.” Spectator 275, no. 8722 (9 September 1995): 41-2.

In the following review, Glazebrook explores the genre of Kiss and Tell, maintaining that “all deviations from the conventional forms in fiction are attempts to side-step some of the difficulties of novel-writing,” claiming de Botton both gains and loses certain elements by using a biographical method in this book.

This engaging and delightful book [Kiss & Tell] is the history of a love affair told by the boy in the form of a biography of the girl. She, Isabel, is middle-class, middle twenties, a London girl with an office job. There is nothing remarkable about her except that she is an individual; and the biographical form in which the novel is cast—not so much a story as a straightforward shot at telling us what someone is really like—sets out her individuality in multifarious...