Dr. Samuel Johnson observed that everyone’s life is a subject worthy of the biographer’s art. Accused by a former girlfriend of being unable to empathize, the narrator of Alain de Botton’s Kiss & Tell takes Johnson’s idea to heart and decides to write about the next person who walks into his life.

He meets Isabel Rogers, a production assistant at a small stationery company in London, apparently an ordinary woman. But as the biographer’s understanding of Isabel deepens, she becomes remarkable. Her smallest quirks, private habits, and opinions become worthy of the most painstaking investigation-and unexpectedly attractive to her biographer.