In Kiss Me First, Leila is asked to assume the online presence of a woman who will commit suicide. Ted Aljibe / AFP
In Kiss Me First, Leila is asked to assume the online presence of a woman who will commit suicide. Ted Aljibe / AFP

Book review: Lottie Moggach's impressive debut novel has depth, pace



A while back I found myself wondering what happened to your Facebook page after you died. One of my Facebook friends had tragically passed away, but there she still was, staring back at me from her profile page. Would it just sit there gathering digital dust, I wondered? Would I still get the automatic reminders to wish her a happy birthday each year? How would anyone at Facebook know this user was no longer with us? This, I found out, is where a "digital executor" steps in. They're like the executor of a will, but their work is specific to your online presence. In the event of your death, they take care of your email accounts, photo albums on Flickr, Twitter feed, Facebook profile, or whatever social media strands you use. But what if they took control of your digital persona instead? What if, in effect, they became you? This is the conceit that lies at the heart of Lottie Moggach's (daughter of the best-selling novelist Deborah Moggach) debut novel Kiss Me First.

Twenty-three year-old Leila is a loner. She lives in a grimy little flat above an Indian restaurant in Rotherhithe, south-east London. She moved here from Kentish Town in north London after her mother died of MS. The cost of the illness - equipment, nurses' fees, her mother's inability to work - has eaten up most of their already meagre finances so all that's left is enough money for them to prepare for the inevitable by buying Leila a flat in a less than salubrious part of town.

With her mother gone, Leila is now completely alone, but she's not necessarily lonely. Friends have never been a huge part of her life. She has 75 on Facebook - her old childhood friend Rashida whom she's since lost touch with; Lucy, a fellow employee from Leila's short-lived employment at a coffee shop; and 73 girls she went to school with who aren't "proper friends" anyway, just people trawling for numbers. It's her other online activities that make her who she is. She works from home, testing computer software for a company that earns her a basic wage, but she fits this around playing World of Warcraft for eight hours a day, which is something of a "full-time job".

It's one of her fellow players who first suggests she check out Red Pill, a "very cool" philosophy chat room run by a man named Adrian Dervish, an American self-styled philosophy guru who inspires an almost cult-like following in the site's users. Leila joins up, and after her first tentative involvement in the discussion threads, quickly graduates from being a "Newly Enlightened" to a regular member, then onwards to the upper echelons of "Elite Thinker" - a title reserved for the few Adrian deems capable of "more advanced thought".

Soon after, she receives a message from Adrian suggesting an "F2F" (that's a face-to-face meeting, for those of us not so fluent in online speak), rather coincidentally opposite the very hospital where her dying mother had been treated. They exchange a few social niceties but Adrian doesn't beat around the bush - is she aware of the "claim argument", he inquires, the concept that "not only do we not have the right to prevent those who wish to end their lives from doing so, but that we actually have a duty to help them, if asked". He explains to Leila that a woman, Tess, has approached him, "desperate to kill herself", but she doesn't want her friends and family to know what she's done, so she and Adrian have hatched a plan to "employ someone to pretend to be her online, so that no one would be able to tell she was not still alive". Leila isn't versed in the complexities of the philosophical argument, but she's eager to please, not to mention well aware, from her own experiences with her mother, of what it's like to see someone suffer, perhaps unnecessarily. And so she agrees to take control of Tess's life, to digitally relocate her to a new home on the other side of the world, write emails to her friends and family about her wonderful new life, post Facebook status updates so nobody realises anything is amiss, then slowly, over time, act as "a dimmer switch" on the life she's created, enabling the avatar that Tess has become to "slip away from the world unnoticed", just as the real Tess will have already done a year or so previously.

Leila and Tess spend hours Skyping so Tess can fill the younger girl in on all the details of her life, and Leila is a diligent student - she even gives up her job, entirely freeing up her time for the project - storing all the information in spreadsheets and wall charts, asking the questions to fill in the many blanks the somewhat flaky Tess leaves out of her story. Then, one day they're done. They end their final conversation, the screen in front of Leila goes blank, and the real work begins.

To describe her as "immersed" in Tess's new life is a bit of an understatement; the moment it strikes 9am on the isolated island in Canada she's relocated Tess to, Leila's "on stage" as the other woman for the next 16 hours or so. At first it's as straightforward, and as fun, as playing one of the computer games she loves: "like having an avatar, but much better." But slowly the lines between the two women become blurred; Leila becomes Tess, but the flip side of this is that Tess becomes Leila - and despite her isolation from the real world, this new Leila/Tess still wants some of the perks of an actual bodily existence.

Leila is a fascinating creation. Since she narrates the novel from the very first right through to the bitter end, initially it's hard to comprehend quite how "different" she is, but as the story progresses, Moggach leaves us clever clues along the way that, pieced together, paint a picture of a woman who's not just out of the loop (she has to "Google" most of the references made by her own generation), but most likely somewhere on the autistic spectrum. She recalls a builder who, discovering her name was Leila, always sung the first few lines of the songLayla when he saw her, but after she pointed out the difference in the spellings, can't understand why he keeps on singing it. She's unable to independently recognise emotions, turning to the internet for "research, cross-referencing various definitions of the emotion with my feeling", and her imaginative capacity is next to none: "I tried to imagine him in his flat in Kensal Green but, as I had never been inside a flat in Kensal Green, my mind came up blank." Even her own grandmother calls her a "big, weird child". There's also the dogged logic with which she tells her story, so all-encompassing is her character. There's nothing unreliable about this narrator; she's painfully truthful.

Kiss Me First is a debut of surprising depths. It's rich in moral dilemmas and contemporary philosophical wrangling, from thoughts of assisted suicide to "the dangers of the internet and this lost generation of young people, vulnerable little souls who were there to be taken advantage of". But at the same time it's written with the pace of an easily digestible thriller. My only complaint is that it's one of those stories where all the loose ends are surprisingly neatly tied up, but this is a minor gripe in an otherwise praise-filled appreciation of a novelist who looks set to take the literary world by storm.

Lucy Scholes is a freelance journalist based in London.

thereview@thenational.ae

COMPANY PROFILE
Name: HyperSpace
 
Started: 2020
 
Founders: Alexander Heller, Rama Allen and Desi Gonzalez
 
Based: Dubai, UAE
 
Sector: Entertainment 
 
Number of staff: 210 
 
Investment raised: $75 million from investors including Galaxy Interactive, Riyadh Season, Sega Ventures and Apis Venture Partners
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Almnssa
Started: August 2020
Founder: Areej Selmi
Based: Gaza
Sectors: Internet, e-commerce
Investments: Grants/private funding
WHAT%20IS%20'JUICE%20JACKING'%3F
%3Cp%3E%E2%80%A2%20Juice%20jacking%2C%20in%20the%20simplest%20terms%2C%20is%20using%20a%20rogue%20USB%20cable%20to%20access%20a%20device%20and%20compromise%20its%20contents%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%E2%80%A2%20The%20exploit%20is%20taken%20advantage%20of%20by%20the%20fact%20that%20the%20data%20stream%20and%20power%20supply%20pass%20through%20the%20same%20cable.%20The%20most%20common%20example%20is%20connecting%20a%20smartphone%20to%20a%20PC%20to%20both%20transfer%20data%20and%20charge%20the%20former%20at%20the%20same%20time%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%E2%80%A2%20The%20term%20was%20first%20coined%20in%202011%20after%20researchers%20created%20a%20compromised%20charging%20kiosk%20to%20bring%20awareness%20to%20the%20exploit%3B%20when%20users%20plugged%20in%20their%20devices%2C%20they%20received%20a%20security%20warning%20and%20discovered%20that%20their%20phones%20had%20paired%20to%20the%20kiosk%2C%20according%20to%20US%20cybersecurity%20company%20Norton%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%E2%80%A2%20While%20juice%20jacking%20is%20a%20real%20threat%2C%20there%20have%20been%20no%20known%20widespread%20instances.%20Apple%20and%20Google%20have%20also%20added%20security%20layers%20to%20prevent%20this%20on%20the%20iOS%20and%20Android%20devices%2C%20respectively%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
COMPANY%20PROFILE
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EName%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Floward%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBased%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ERiyadh%2C%20Saudi%20Arabia%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFounders%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EAbdulaziz%20Al%20Loughani%20and%20Mohamed%20Al%20Arifi%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ESector%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EE-commerce%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ETotal%20funding%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EAbout%20%24200%20million%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestors%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EAljazira%20Capital%2C%20Rainwater%20Partners%2C%20STV%20and%20Impact46%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ENumber%20of%20employees%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E1%2C200%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
About Takalam

Date started: early 2020

Founders: Khawla Hammad and Inas Abu Shashieh

Based: Abu Dhabi

Sector: HealthTech and wellness

Number of staff: 4

Funding to date: Bootstrapped

Formula Middle East Calendar (Formula Regional and Formula 4)
Round 1: January 17-19, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
 
Round 2: January 22-23, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
 
Round 3: February 7-9, Dubai Autodrome – Dubai
 
Round 4: February 14-16, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
 
Round 5: February 25-27, Jeddah Corniche Circuit – Saudi Arabia
Cryopreservation: A timeline
  1. Keyhole surgery under general anaesthetic
  2. Ovarian tissue surgically removed
  3. Tissue processed in a high-tech facility
  4. Tissue re-implanted at a time of the patient’s choosing
  5. Full hormone production regained within 4-6 months
Walls

Louis Tomlinson

3 out of 5 stars

(Syco Music/Arista Records)

Vidaamuyarchi

Director: Magizh Thirumeni

Stars: Ajith Kumar, Arjun Sarja, Trisha Krishnan, Regina Cassandra

Rating: 4/5

 

Paatal Lok season two

Directors: Avinash Arun, Prosit Roy 

Stars: Jaideep Ahlawat, Ishwak Singh, Lc Sekhose, Merenla Imsong

Rating: 4.5/5

Ticket prices
  • Golden circle - Dh995
  • Floor Standing - Dh495
  • Lower Bowl Platinum - Dh95
  • Lower Bowl premium - Dh795
  • Lower Bowl Plus - Dh695
  • Lower Bowl Standard- Dh595
  • Upper Bowl Premium - Dh395
  • Upper Bowl standard - Dh295
What drives subscription retailing?

Once the domain of newspaper home deliveries, subscription model retailing has combined with e-commerce to permeate myriad products and services.

The concept has grown tremendously around the world and is forecast to thrive further, according to UnivDatos Market Insights’ report on recent and predicted trends in the sector.

The global subscription e-commerce market was valued at $13.2 billion (Dh48.5bn) in 2018. It is forecast to touch $478.2bn in 2025, and include the entertainment, fitness, food, cosmetics, baby care and fashion sectors.

The report says subscription-based services currently constitute “a small trend within e-commerce”. The US hosts almost 70 per cent of recurring plan firms, including leaders Dollar Shave Club, Hello Fresh and Netflix. Walmart and Sephora are among longer established retailers entering the space.

UnivDatos cites younger and affluent urbanites as prime subscription targets, with women currently the largest share of end-users.

That’s expected to remain unchanged until 2025, when women will represent a $246.6bn market share, owing to increasing numbers of start-ups targeting women.

Personal care and beauty occupy the largest chunk of the worldwide subscription e-commerce market, with changing lifestyles, work schedules, customisation and convenience among the chief future drivers.

SWEET%20TOOTH
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ECreated%20by%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Jim%20Mickle%2C%20Beth%20Schwartz%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EStars%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Nonso%20Anozie%2C%20Christian%20Convery%2C%20Adeel%20Akhtar%2C%20Stefania%20LaVie%20Owen%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ERating%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%203.5%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Game Changer

Director: Shankar 

Stars: Ram Charan, Kiara Advani, Anjali, S J Suryah, Jayaram

Rating: 2/5

Emergency

Director: Kangana Ranaut

Stars: Kangana Ranaut, Anupam Kher, Shreyas Talpade, Milind Soman, Mahima Chaudhry 

Rating: 2/5

MATCH INFO

Chelsea 3 (Abraham 11', 17', 74')

Luton Town 1 (Clark 30')

Man of the match Abraham (Chelsea)

Student Of The Year 2

Director: Punit Malhotra

Stars: Tiger Shroff, Tara Sutaria, Ananya Pandey, Aditya Seal 

1.5 stars

Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.

Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.

Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.

“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.

Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.

From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.

Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.

BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.

Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.

Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.

“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.

“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.

“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”

The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”

COMPANY PROFILE
Name: ARDH Collective
Based: Dubai
Founders: Alhaan Ahmed, Alyina Ahmed and Maximo Tettamanzi
Sector: Sustainability
Total funding: Self funded
Number of employees: 4

Like a Fading Shadow

Antonio Muñoz Molina

Translated from the Spanish by Camilo A. Ramirez

Tuskar Rock Press (pp. 310)

INFO

Visit www.wtatennis.com for more information

 

The bio

Studied up to grade 12 in Vatanappally, a village in India’s southern Thrissur district

Was a middle distance state athletics champion in school

Enjoys driving to Fujairah and Ras Al Khaimah with family

His dream is to continue working as a social worker and help people

Has seven diaries in which he has jotted down notes about his work and money he earned

Keeps the diaries in his car to remember his journey in the Emirates

Greatest Royal Rumble results

John Cena pinned Triple H in a singles match

Cedric Alexander retained the WWE Cruiserweight title against Kalisto

Matt Hardy and Bray Wyatt win the Raw Tag Team titles against Cesaro and Sheamus

Jeff Hardy retained the United States title against Jinder Mahal

Bludgeon Brothers retain the SmackDown Tag Team titles against the Usos

Seth Rollins retains the Intercontinental title against The Miz, Finn Balor and Samoa Joe

AJ Styles remains WWE World Heavyweight champion after he and Shinsuke Nakamura are both counted out

The Undertaker beats Rusev in a casket match

Brock Lesnar retains the WWE Universal title against Roman Reigns in a steel cage match

Braun Strowman won the 50-man Royal Rumble by eliminating Big Cass last