Kiss the Sky [Paperback]

Kiss the Sky - DC Gallin

On one of my last trips to London I found myself in Camden with my friend Jim, we were approached by this lady who was selling her book which was called "Woman in the Sky". We spoke to the lady for a while and Jim bought me the book. It sat in my bookcase for over a half a year before I picked it up and when I started reading it I kept telling myself off for not picking it up before.
Jim... thank you for buying me that book!

In this book we follow Claudia an artist who moves into a studio on Cable Street, East London. But much to her parents dismay she decided to follow her own dreams instead of following the ones her parents had for her.
Claudia hasn't been there long when she meets Paloma a french girl who is house-sitting nearby, but they become good friends but their friendship changes Claudias life forever.
Claudias choices may not always be the right ones but she makes the best out of every situation she gets into. Her choice in men I do find questionable but we don't control who we fall in love with.
The end made my heart flutter as I'd had my suspicions and when I was right I literally yelled out "YES"!

I am currently waiting for the next book from DC Gallin, "Kiss the Sky" was so personal it made me wonder if the author had lived what she'd just written about.

I do admit that when I saw the title "Kiss the Sky" I really was hoping it was a second book from DC, but I'll wait patiently for the next installment. The characters are very easy to relate to and it made me wish I was of that generation and could have lived in those times and experienced those things.

Thank you DC for a book that I'll always remember and especially for writing something that gave me goosebumps and a feeling that I was really reading something TRULY special and not something that's been used time and time again.

4.5 out of 5.

George Bernard Shaw wrote, "Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself." The characters in "Kiss the Sky" by D C Gallin certainly prove this nugget of wisdom to be true. However, George Bernard Shaw also wrote, "Youth is wasted on the young." and the characters in Gallin's book show that Shaw may have had it right once, but not twice.

Gallin's stunningly realistic cast of artists, hedonists and other, purposeful and not-so-purposeful misfits are the oddest of heroes in the oddest of wars: the peaceful effort to maintain individuality, creative integrity and personal freedom in London. Claudia and her partners in crime and fun, Q and Paloma, crash in industrial squats, paint, create, photograph and dance their way through life fueled by passion for art, love and dreaming of a world where they can do as they wish, for as long as they wish, provided they do no one harm.

The freedom of their life, lived on the outer fringes of society, is palpable in Gallin's pages. You can feel the thump of the bass and drums in your chest and feel the trickles of perspiration across your body as you dance until dawn. Reading Gallin's excellent book is like attending a novel-long rave where the sex is hot, the music is loud and the people you meet are trippy, interesting beings following not the trusted, paved path.

But, eventually, the rave ends, the sun comes up and life's challenges creep in. Claudia and her friends find that the light of day sometimes brings an unforeseen perspective and, as is always true, some bad characters bent on using people try to work their way in to the circles of trust and freedom. Eventually, Claudia finds herself in what the poet Corso called "the most common of situations...trembling and knowledged with responsibility".

"Kiss the Sky" is an immersion into the underground world of rave culture. It is a work of art where paradox is embraced, as it is in real life, covering light, dark, bright, dull, good and bad as not mutually exclusive, but the multiple facets of the complexity of life. "Kiss the Sky" is also a study of people, art, freedom and responsibility.

Gallin's book manages to be all those things and yet be a fun and very humorous novel. Do yourself a favor, swallow the magic pellet of D C Gallin's, "Kiss the Sky" and allow her to take you on a beautiful and beatific trip without having to leave your favorite armchair.

This book is excellent at capturing the characters and place and events perfectly. If you like books about people then this really comes alive with an array of colourful characters. The story is based on a 20-something artist moving to London trying to make something of herself and her art. It is about the real person, the real art and for this reason it is a beautiful book.