#BlogTour ‘Kissing Emma’ by Shappi Khorsandi

About the book…

From widely acclaimed comedian and author, Shappi Khorsandi, comes a modern fable about the rise and fall of a beautiful, but vulnerable, young woman in a world obsessed with money, status and looks.

Emma and her mother are down on their luck. They’re taking turns sleeping on the sofa in her nan’s tiny flat – and desperately trying to come up with an escape plan.

Emma is struggling with her family, struggling at school where the girls are bitchy towards her and the boys only seem to want one thing, and struggling with never having enough money for anything, ever.

Just as she’s contemplating quitting school to get a real job, she meets two men who convince her that she has a shot at modelling. But their motives are far from innocent, and Emma is soon pulled into a dark world. And then she meets Con, who is rich, handsome and so romantic! Has Emma’s luck finally changed?

Kissing Emma is inspired by the real life and untold story of Emma Hamilton, Lord Nelson’s mistress. But Shappi Khorsandi’s modern Emma is going to get the happy ending her namesake never did – and stick two fingers up at the men who dare to take advantage of young women while she’s doing it.

‘Kissing Emma’ by Shappi Khorsandi is out now, published by Hachette Children’s Group in paperback original, priced £7.03 on Amazon, £7.99 on Waterstones, and £7.64 from Blackwells (independent store prices may vary).

I am so very grateful to Courtney at Ed PR for having me on the blog tour and for my gifted review copy.

The skilled inter-weaving of a teenage girl’s life , and the true story of Emma Hamilton, the mistress of Horatio Nelson, combines to make a brutally honest picture of the way in which women are regarded as disposable.

Examining Emma from her disrupted, violent childhood, where she begins to be framed for her associations with the estate she lives on, her father’s reputation, the missed opportunities of her mother’s life choices and the violence and abuse which exists as the family’s norm, the novel follows her through to her late teens.

As she grows in this shadow of her mother’s unrevealed involvement in her father’s death, Emma is looked down upon, groomed almost by her mother to use her looks and natural beauty as her ticket out of sleeping in her Nan’s living room, taking on cleaning jobs to make ends meet, fending off the lascivious looks of boys(and men) as well as the jealousy of her classmates.

Nothing is secure in Emma’s life, all she has is the expectation that money will buy her freedom, and the way to the money which will rescue her and her mother is through her external appearance. No-one seems to value her for her intelligence and her quick wit, her acting dreams are smashed by her careers advisor, and the are further enforced by the casual disregard which boys treat her with once they have what they wanted.

The sheer rage that builds as you read a story which could, frankly, be set in any time period and be wildly accurate, is the same as it ever was-looks and brains do not go hand in hand, Emma’s looks make her expendable, disposable and, most of all, consumable. And after being taken advantage of by 2 boys that she thought were really seeing her, she decides to parse her one perceived redeeming feature to her advantage.

Except this is not a grown woman.

She is sixteen.

And still, still, she is blamed for the things that happen to her, from being sexually assaulted, slut shamed by girls in her school, abandoned for being too ‘needy’ and exploited by men who scented her vulnerability and groomed her to be their plaything/investment. KissingEmma  is the instagram handle they give her , again reinforcing this is something which happens to her , making her a passive recipient of men’s desires, objectifying her. This is viewed through the reflections Emma makes as she goes through her threads, responding to the girls who love her look, in order to sell the ‘freebies’ she has been sent, and ignoring the pervy men. She is unaware that she is showing herself as someone to influence young girls into this lifestyle until it is too late to get out.

By the time she is 16, she has lived multiple lifetimes, survived more trauma than anyone should have had to, and come through the other side.

Through Emma’s eyes you see how poverty limits your life choices, informs how people think of you, don’t even give you a chance to show what you are made of.

Emma is a walking, talking definition of ‘know your place,’ and ‘stay in your lane.’

As someone who has lived in social housing for the best parts of two decades, this is something I can relate to so very. The constant under-estimation of ambition and the pouring of cold water onto dreams is so very realistically portrayed, the veracity of a life lived on the edge is not over egged, but played perfectly. The ‘wrong’ postcode is very much in evidence, I have 5 daughters all of whom have been underestimated, had to fight harder to be seen , and needed more resilience than you can imagine because of where we live. And this core is in Emma, she does not judge her mother for the way she was brought up, her mother knew no better.

The only life lesson she could give Emma is to avoid the handsome men, and go for quality not quantity, she gives her a strong work ethic and moves her family when life in her flat becomes unbearable. She wastes no time packing Emma up and moving in with Emma’s Nan, aunt Jean and 2 cousins after Emma is assaulted by men on their estate. She tells Emma to aim higher, that she is too good for the future that she is destined for , and it is this core which makes Emma fight for more, strive for more for herself.

And it is, ultimately, her sense of self and her realness which shines through and carries her through the many, many different ways that men want to consume her. They want her to be a secret from their family, they want her to make them money and they want her body. And they will tell her anything to get what they want.

The way in which Emma finds herself, takes back her sense of identity is incredible, she fights back, and , despite being used by 2 men to provide Instagram ‘content’ manages to sit her GCSE’s is an incredible feat.

Emma’s visibility contrast so much with the fact that the people in her life do not really ‘see’ her, the one constant in her life is ex-social worker Suze, who , being trans, has found herself and her identity and is not about to let it get away from her. In Emma she sees the conflation between the person she is, and the person she is becoming, and is a rare and beautiful sweet spot in a novel that has violence, assault, coercive control and abusive relationships in it.

In order to break the cycle that exists in her Nan-‘men will take anything if it is out there on a platter-her aunt, who puts up with her ‘pervy’ husband because it is better than being alone, her cousins who stay out all night and have money despite no jobs, her mother who was regularly beaten by her husband and then turned into a pariah upon his death.

This is an intelligent novel that speaks to teens, not at them, it has an authentic voice and an understanding of so many issues facing young girls today and yet returns to them the power of their agency in a way that is not overblown, or exaggerated.

In short, it is wonderful, heartbreaking, outstanding, timely and wise.

I would encourage mothers of teen girls to leave this lying around the house, leave it on a bedside table, talk about, talk about the issues it raises and the original Emma Hamilton.

Let’s start by giving these girls and women back their names, stop undervaluing them and raise them up.

Let them be influenced by authenticity ,not a shallow reproduction of a filtered reality.

About the author…

Shaparak “Shappi” Khorsandi (born 8 June 1973) is an Iranian-born British comedian.

The daughter of Hadi Khorsandi, her family was forced to flee from Iran to London after the Islamic Revolution following the publication of a satirical poem her father composed. The poem was perceived as being critical of the revolutionary regime. Shappi was raised without any religion.
Khorsandi graduated from the University of Winchester in 1995, with a degree in Drama, Theatre and Television, then moving onto pursue a career in comedy. In 2010, the University honoured her by awarding her an honorary doctorate.
Khorsandi was married to fellow comedian Christian Reilly, by whom she has a son named Charlie. They divorced in 2010. She lives with her son in west London near Richmond Park. Her father and brother are also stand-up comedians.

Khorsandi performs stand-up comedy, having been a noted performer at Joe Wilson’s Comedy Madhouse throughout 1997. She has appeared on many BBC Radio 4 programmes, including Quote… Unquote, Loose Ends, You and Yours, Midweek, Just A Minute, The Now Show and The News Quiz, as well as BBC Television’s Have I Got News For You.

In July 2009 she hosted her own four-part series, Shappi Talk on BBC Radio 4, examining what it is like growing up in multi-cultural families. She also writes an occasional column for online magazine Iranian.com.

In 2007, she made her first trip to Australia and the Melbourne Comedy Festival with her show Asylum Speaker. She also appeared live on the Australia comedy talk show Rove.

Later, she was nominated for best breakthrough act at the 2007 Chortle Awards. In December 2008, she appeared on the BBC stand-up television show Live at the Apollo alongside Russell Kane and Al Murray. She also made an appearance on Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow on 20 June 2009, Friday Night with Jonathan Ross on 26 June 2009 and 8 Out of 10 Cats on 10 July 2009.

Khorsandi’s memoir, ‘A Beginner’s Guide To Acting English’, was published by Ebury Press on 2 July 2009. She performed her show, The Distracted Activist, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe from 6–31 August 2009.
She was a panellist on Question Time in 2006, and returned on 14 January 2010. During that show, she mentioned that her political support goes to Labour.

She performed on the second episode of Let’s Dance for Sport Relief 2010.
In 2010, Khorsandi took part in Channel 4’s Comedy Gala, a benefit show held in aid of Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital, filmed live at the O2 Arena in London on 30 March. She appeared as a guest in Genius hosted by Dave Gorman on 31 October 2010. Khorsandi appeared on Channel 4’s The Celebrity Bank Job in March 2012 and won £59,000 for her chosen charities

Links-https://www.shappi.co.uk/

Twitter @ShappiKhorsandi @ed_pr @HachetteKids