SOURCE: “How Was It for Me?” in New Statesman, Vol. 126, No. 4347, August 15, 1997, pp. 44–45.

In the following review, Moore offers a mixed assessment of The Kiss, arguing that a memoir can only be effective if the reader is persuaded to feel a connection with the author.

The subject that obsesses us at the end of this long century is subjectivity itself. “How was it for me?” we continually ask ourselves. Such navel-gazing could be attributed to the fragmentation of modern life, the end of ideology, the collapse of the grand narratives or any postmodern, premillennial panic that you care to theorise. We cannot know or be certain of anything outside ourselves; it is all just too confusing. As the grand narratives shatter into millions of smaller ones, all crying “me, me, me,” myriad voices whisper: “I may not be a novelist but I know what I'm like.”

This belief...