WITH THE KISSES OF HIS MOUTH

WITH THE KISSES OF HIS MOUTH memoir by Orange Prize shortlisted author Monique Roffey is published by Simon & Schuster on Thursday 23 June. In the run-up to publication it has already garnered lots of media attention, including Monique's own essay in the Guardian Weekend Magazine, and a feature in Psychologies. Julie Myerson says the following in the Observer: 'Monique Roffey is an acclaimed fiction writer - her THE WHITE WOMAN ON THE GREEN BICYCLE was shortlisted for last year's Orange Prize. Her honest, self-exposing new memoir is about sex and about far more - it's a candid exploration of the vulnerability of middle-age, as well as a fairly brutal examination of the human heart and its endless capacity to be broken This book is astoundingly brave. It is funny. It speeds along. It has magic at its heart - that indefinable sliver of human warmth and hope that all the best, most searching memoirs seem to have. Moreover, Roffey's somehow irrepressible willingness to share begins to seem generous, infectious even I found myself knocked off course in a rather moving and indescribable way she actually makes a writerly choice to remain "blind" because "I wanted to turn the darkness in me into prose". Well, good. Because isn't that exactly what we need writers - the brightest, most adventurous and self-scrutinising ones, like Roffey - to do: to take that same darkness and turn it into something so blazingly alive that it can shine a little light on the rest of us?' -- Julie Myerson, The Observer Daisy Goodwin has this to say in the Sunday Times: 'WITH THE KISSES OF HIS MOUTH is a vivid, entertaining and unexpectedly moving read about a middle-aged woman's attempt to find enlightenment through sex. It is not coldly erotic like THE SEXUAL LIFE OF CATHERINE M, or unrepentantly horny like Samantha from SEX AND THE CITY. It is a good deal more rueful and emotional.' MORE PRAISE FOR WITH THE KISSES OF HIS MOUTH 'WITH THE KISSES OF HIS MOUTH is an important book. How many books explore erotic love fully, fearlessly and intelligently? None that I've read - until now. Monique Roffey's brave and poignant quest for the nature of love - erotic and romantic - will give you glimpses of your most intimate self. Buy it, read it, and if it doesn't turn you inside out, you may consider yourself dead.' -- Kapka Kassabova, author of STREET WITHOUT A NAME 'Intelligent, dark, thorny but redemptive book about sex.' -- Robert Rowland Smith, author of BREAKFAST WITH SOCRATES 'From Craigslist to tantra classes, this is a heartbreaking and, at times, explicit memoir of rediscovery' -- Elle 'Less of Belle de Jour's lifestyle raunchiness and far more honesty about how sex feels - as opposed to how it looks Roffey's writing soars when she's describing the intense grief she experienced at the end of the great love affair that prompted her journey Roffey asks serious questions about what place sex has in modern relationships, and is blessed with admirable honesty.' -- Alexandra Heminsley, Independent on Sunday Spent her childhood in Trinidad, Papua New Guinea and Australia, and was educated in Surrey and at UEA. She has worked as a journalist, and for The British Council, Amnesty International and as a Centre Director for the Arvon Foundation. She completed an MA in Creative Writing at Lancaster and was Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Sussex and Chichester Universities. She lives in London. Now writing a memoir WITH THE KISSES OF HIS MOUTH (UK: Scribner 2011, PDF available 472pp) and a new novel, ARCHIPELAGO (UK: Scribner^). "A thrill ... a blast of a read." --- The Independent