The Kiss

This is a novel about obsession, set in present-day Edinburgh and Paris, though it pivots around the relationship of Rodin and Gwen John in the early part of the 20th Century.

Cormac, born and brought up in Belfast, an art teacher, admirer of Rodin, and a sculptor himself, takes a group of students to Paris. One of them, Clarinda, who is fifteen, not quite sixteen, becomes obsessed by the idea of Gwen John’s passion for Rodin and begins to mirror it by becoming herself obsessed with her teacher, which throws his life and relationships with his wife and daughter into total confusion, as well as leading to charges being laid against him and suspension from school on his return from Paris.