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Strangers may kiss
12mo. A good copy, very little read, with very minor shelf wear. Mottled linen-type cloth cover with slight browning to spine, which is very slightly tilted. Immediate despatch from the UK.
- GenresFiction
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1930
About the author
Ursula Parrott
21 books52 followersUrsula Parrott (March 26, 1899 – September 1957), was an American writer of romantic novels. Her first book, Ex-Wife (1929), was a best seller, and was adapted for film as The Divorcee, starring Norma Shearer. Exploring changing sexual mores and their implications for women, Ex-Wife was considered scandalous in its time. Between 1930 and 1936, Parrott sold the rights to eight more novels and stories that were made into films.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 2, 2024
When a book is as good as Ursula Parrott’s first novel, Ex-Wife, one simply must have more. There was no question that I would track down a second Ursula Parrott novel, however long out of print. I hope to soon read a third.
Strangers May Kiss, Parrott’s follow-up to Ex-Wife, was a best seller in 1930 and made into a major motion picture in 1931. The movie starred Norma Shearer, who’d won an Oscar for her star turn in The Divorcee, adapted from Ex-Wife, the previous year.
Strangers May Kiss is jazz-age New York, is old Hollywood, is pure melodrama, is firmly within the genre then called “women's fiction,” the norms of which don’t seem to map perfectly onto any one contemporary genre, although it was obviously an important precursor of both contemporary romance and that school of literary fiction that dissects the experiences of bored, passionate, and passionately bored young women living and fucking in large cities.
The novel is not quite as perfectly executed as Ex-Wife. Parrott’s first novel was at once an audacious bid for a reputation and a triumphant effort to tell a very personal story—the story of a modern divorce—that perhaps no one or almost no one had quite then told, though many thousands had already lived it. Its successor reads, to a certain extent, as the work of an established professional writer on a deadline. But although this novel is not perfect, it is rich and heady and gorgeous and provoking and heartbreaking and wonderful. Which is enough, surely.
“She said, with passion, ‘I never want a daughter. . . . Men at least make their own lives’” (358).
From a historical perspective, one of the things that makes Strangers May Kiss so fascinating is that it captures a moment in the tumbling forward rush of American modernity when the norms that had constrained women’s lives so sharply in the 19th century were beginning to collapse, but the liberation that that change promised was still a distant enough prospect that it could reasonably be construed as no liberation at all. A moment when a young woman could graduate from college and dream of traveling the world as a newspaper report, and yet still believe, and be surrounded by others who insisted, that only by attaching herself to the right man could anything, anything at all, be meaningfully possible in her life.
“Lisbeth went automatically to light the gas oven. When she lighted it she thought that one read often of women who closed themselves in their kitchens and turned on gas without lighting it, and went fairly comfortably from further concern with their difficulties. For the first time in her life, she understood how they could do that — how they could give up the stir and the colour and the excitement of living. They grew tired, she supposed, of wanting things they knew they would never have, of learning that it was unimportant, even, whether they had them or not” (237).
What makes Strangers May Kiss timeless is that, like all great novels, it is no more limited to the problems of lost young American women adrift in the ‘20s—covering their ears against the roar of the ‘20s, screaming at the top of their lungs to be part of the roar themselves—than The Sun Also Rises or This Side of Paradise are limited to the problems of lost young American men. All three novels are about the great glorious shock and disappointment of being a human being.
“If there were anything in the world now that stirred her to an intensity of emotion that approximated passion, it was the city of New York. To her the city had a voice that was as raucous as the blend of sirens in the harbour and truck horns in the streets—a voice of power. It seemed to rise from crowded sidewalks: ‘March on. It don’t matter where or why—you had your fun, didn’t you? It’s finished? What of it and who cares? March on. Don’t block traffic. You have a broken heart? Forget it. Applesauce. Bologna. March on. You’re tired? Who isn’t, sometimes? March on. You didn’t get what you want? Nobody does in the end’” (536).
Strangers May Kiss, Parrott’s follow-up to Ex-Wife, was a best seller in 1930 and made into a major motion picture in 1931. The movie starred Norma Shearer, who’d won an Oscar for her star turn in The Divorcee, adapted from Ex-Wife, the previous year.
Strangers May Kiss is jazz-age New York, is old Hollywood, is pure melodrama, is firmly within the genre then called “women's fiction,” the norms of which don’t seem to map perfectly onto any one contemporary genre, although it was obviously an important precursor of both contemporary romance and that school of literary fiction that dissects the experiences of bored, passionate, and passionately bored young women living and fucking in large cities.
The novel is not quite as perfectly executed as Ex-Wife. Parrott’s first novel was at once an audacious bid for a reputation and a triumphant effort to tell a very personal story—the story of a modern divorce—that perhaps no one or almost no one had quite then told, though many thousands had already lived it. Its successor reads, to a certain extent, as the work of an established professional writer on a deadline. But although this novel is not perfect, it is rich and heady and gorgeous and provoking and heartbreaking and wonderful. Which is enough, surely.
“She said, with passion, ‘I never want a daughter. . . . Men at least make their own lives’” (358).
From a historical perspective, one of the things that makes Strangers May Kiss so fascinating is that it captures a moment in the tumbling forward rush of American modernity when the norms that had constrained women’s lives so sharply in the 19th century were beginning to collapse, but the liberation that that change promised was still a distant enough prospect that it could reasonably be construed as no liberation at all. A moment when a young woman could graduate from college and dream of traveling the world as a newspaper report, and yet still believe, and be surrounded by others who insisted, that only by attaching herself to the right man could anything, anything at all, be meaningfully possible in her life.
“Lisbeth went automatically to light the gas oven. When she lighted it she thought that one read often of women who closed themselves in their kitchens and turned on gas without lighting it, and went fairly comfortably from further concern with their difficulties. For the first time in her life, she understood how they could do that — how they could give up the stir and the colour and the excitement of living. They grew tired, she supposed, of wanting things they knew they would never have, of learning that it was unimportant, even, whether they had them or not” (237).
What makes Strangers May Kiss timeless is that, like all great novels, it is no more limited to the problems of lost young American women adrift in the ‘20s—covering their ears against the roar of the ‘20s, screaming at the top of their lungs to be part of the roar themselves—than The Sun Also Rises or This Side of Paradise are limited to the problems of lost young American men. All three novels are about the great glorious shock and disappointment of being a human being.
“If there were anything in the world now that stirred her to an intensity of emotion that approximated passion, it was the city of New York. To her the city had a voice that was as raucous as the blend of sirens in the harbour and truck horns in the streets—a voice of power. It seemed to rise from crowded sidewalks: ‘March on. It don’t matter where or why—you had your fun, didn’t you? It’s finished? What of it and who cares? March on. Don’t block traffic. You have a broken heart? Forget it. Applesauce. Bologna. March on. You’re tired? Who isn’t, sometimes? March on. You didn’t get what you want? Nobody does in the end’” (536).
April 9, 2025
Ursula, you have gutted me. There are few truly upbeat points in this book. Even when the narrator is happy, it almost feels like seeing a friend in the middle of delusion with a crush. I don’t think this book was as evolved as Ex Wife, but it still painted a beautiful picture of love, loss, happiness, and the interconnected-ness of our lives and destinies. I loved it.
June 16, 2026
Well I stumbled upon this book in a thrift store with a dirty hard cover with a catalog consistent of only three chapters: Yesterday, Today, tomorrow.
I would say reading it i felt like the emotions that i was feeling was spoken there, the story its showcasing the life that the desires we feel and we suppress are getting acted on
How real was the way she felt, the way she lived even though fantasy but it felt like a life that’s not filtered by social expectations or fears, its about someone feeling something and just expressing it
I felt seen when i read it, and i admire the author.
I would say reading it i felt like the emotions that i was feeling was spoken there, the story its showcasing the life that the desires we feel and we suppress are getting acted on
How real was the way she felt, the way she lived even though fantasy but it felt like a life that’s not filtered by social expectations or fears, its about someone feeling something and just expressing it
I felt seen when i read it, and i admire the author.
August 12, 2026
I have never so much wanted to shake sense into a character as I wished to do to the main character Lisbeth. ‘Strangers May Kiss’ is a cautionary tale, in its tragedy - idealistic young women ought to be more practical regarding ‘love’ and men.
June 21, 2024
Be prepared. This is an *incredible* downer. Extraordinarily depressing.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews