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The Kiss
We meet at airports. We meet in cities where we've never been before. We meet where no one will recognize us. A "man of God" is how someone described my father to me. I don 't remember who. Not my mother. I'm young enough that I take the words to mean he has magical properties and that he is good, better than other people. With his hand under my chin, my father draws my face toward his own. He touches his lips to mine. I stiffen. I am frightened by the kiss. I know it wrong, and its wrongness is what lets me know, too, that it is a secret.
224 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1996
233 people are currently reading
5049 people want to read
About the author
Kathryn Harrison
47 books295 followersKathryn Harrison is the author of the novels Envy, The Seal Wife, The Binding Chair, Poison, Exposure, and Thicker Than Water.
She has also written memoirs, The Kiss and The Mother Knot, a travel memoir, The Road to Santiago, a biography, Saint Therese of Lisieux, and a collection of personal essays, Seeking Rapture.
Ms. Harrison is a frequent reviewer for The New York Times Book Review; her essays, which have been included in many anthologies, have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Vogue, O, The Oprah Magazine, Salon, and other publications.
She lives in New York with her husband, the novelist Colin Harrison, and their children.
She has also written memoirs, The Kiss and The Mother Knot, a travel memoir, The Road to Santiago, a biography, Saint Therese of Lisieux, and a collection of personal essays, Seeking Rapture.
Ms. Harrison is a frequent reviewer for The New York Times Book Review; her essays, which have been included in many anthologies, have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Vogue, O, The Oprah Magazine, Salon, and other publications.
She lives in New York with her husband, the novelist Colin Harrison, and their children.
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February 12, 2017
Update: This book was brought to my attention this morning-- Have others read it?
This is a book I'd re-read again today.
I always wondered why I never saw more great novels from this author. The way she wrote this book... I was hanging onto every word.
This is an older book - I still remember it clearly. ( I still own it). It's one of those books that you can't put down- yet when you are finished you're not sure what the hell you should tell others ...
Not the type of book I like to 'rate'..,'
It's very well written- extremely engaging --- I also think it's a test to the reader to see if their own judgments - of the content- will get in the way of 'really' just 'hearing the story the author has to tell.
Thought Provoking to say the least!!!
This is a book I'd re-read again today.
I always wondered why I never saw more great novels from this author. The way she wrote this book... I was hanging onto every word.
This is an older book - I still remember it clearly. ( I still own it). It's one of those books that you can't put down- yet when you are finished you're not sure what the hell you should tell others ...
Not the type of book I like to 'rate'..,'
It's very well written- extremely engaging --- I also think it's a test to the reader to see if their own judgments - of the content- will get in the way of 'really' just 'hearing the story the author has to tell.
Thought Provoking to say the least!!!
April 6, 2010
Somewhere out there in the South a retired ex-minister, a great Don Juan who was told by God personally to fuck his own emotionally needy daughter and God knows who else (he was a children's missionary overseas, after all) must be basking in the proud afterglow of his memories. And then there's the daughter, Kathryn Harrison, the author of this memoir, who was just fucked up enough in the head from family dysfunction to go along with it -- and yet, being a 20- to- 24-year-old young woman when the main part of this story took place was herself an adult who could have chosen to briskly walk in the other direction, but didn't. As I read this, I wasn't inclined to be sympathetic to either of them, especially as certain needs young Miss Harrison craved were being met by the twisted relationship. I'm not here to judge her, but neither am I inclined to let her get by on the infantilism defense, which turns her into a powerless victim -- as so many other reviewers here are simplistically willing to do. Things, people, emotions and the world are more complicated than that. Harrison correctly called it "an affair," a term that is nonetheless hard for us to reconcile within the incestuous context. The father is a total hypocrite jerkwad; hiding behind the mask of religious and domestic respectibility; righteous and arrogant enough to think his station puts him above all morality and that everything is meant to sate his selfish needs. It all adds up to the stuff of a sensational, jaw-dropping, harrowing, nauseating and very unsettling Oprah-style bestseller -- impossible to put down once started. The book is a thoughtful, well-rendered account of confusing needs and twisted inter-family triangles and strange religious moralities gone awry.
September 23, 2020
Kathryn Harrison, la autora de este libro, tenía seis meses cuando sus padres se divorciaron. Estos se enamoraron siendo jóvenes y finalmente Kathryn fue criada por sus abuelos. La niña crece desesperada por algo de afecto materno, a la que observa dormir inmóvil tras un antifaz. En cuanto al padre, solo lo ve un par de veces en años. Cuando Kathryn tiene veinte años la cosa da un giro, se produce un reencuentro. El padre, entonces de treinta y nueve, vuelve a verlas para despedirse de su hija con un largo, húmedo y poco paternal beso. Es aquí donde comienza el infierno para Kathryn.
Mucho se ha dicho de este libro y de su autora. Que si es un canto al incesto, que si es nauseabundo, que si es vergonzoso, que si es una historia de venganza… Y cómo no, se ha señalado en varias ocasiones a Kathryn como la culpable. Pocos, especialmente hombres, la ven como una víctima.
Sus memorias dan voz a varias mujeres y la propia autora explica que no escribió el libro para su padre. Tenemos a la abuela, controladora y de la que su madre intenta escapar. Esta, apasionada de la lectura, los conciertos y aspirante a actriz se choca con la realidad cuando se queda embarazada. Una boda apresurada, un bebé (Kathryn) y un divorcio. Y por último Kathryn, una joven con serias carencias afectivas que busca la atención de su madre. Este es un punto en común para ella y su padre: la madre. Siempre la madre. Tanto que la propia autora explica que todo fue un capítulo (horrendo) más en la relación con su madre.
Es la misma historia de siempre. Es Las Chicas de Emma Cline, es Inocencia Interrumpida cuando Lisa le habla a Daisy de su “carcelero” (casualmente también su padre). Son todas esas chicas, muchas jóvenes, que se toparon o se involucraron con hombres detestables, manipuladores y posesivos. Hombres que saben exactamente qué decir y cómo, “qué lazo de palabras atar al cuello” diría la autora. Son violaciones sistemáticas en las que no hay ni deseo ni consentimiento, además de la enorme diferencia de poderes.
Antes de El Beso el incesto estuvo reflejado en varias de sus novelas, hasta que por fin Kathryn decidió exorcizar a sus demonios en estas memorias, polémicas y complejas.
Tras este episodio de su vida, estudió en la Universidad de Stanford. Adoptó el apellido de su marido, Colin Harrison, y actualmente vive en Nueva York con él y sus hijos.
Mucho se ha dicho de este libro y de su autora. Que si es un canto al incesto, que si es nauseabundo, que si es vergonzoso, que si es una historia de venganza… Y cómo no, se ha señalado en varias ocasiones a Kathryn como la culpable. Pocos, especialmente hombres, la ven como una víctima.
Sus memorias dan voz a varias mujeres y la propia autora explica que no escribió el libro para su padre. Tenemos a la abuela, controladora y de la que su madre intenta escapar. Esta, apasionada de la lectura, los conciertos y aspirante a actriz se choca con la realidad cuando se queda embarazada. Una boda apresurada, un bebé (Kathryn) y un divorcio. Y por último Kathryn, una joven con serias carencias afectivas que busca la atención de su madre. Este es un punto en común para ella y su padre: la madre. Siempre la madre. Tanto que la propia autora explica que todo fue un capítulo (horrendo) más en la relación con su madre.
Es la misma historia de siempre. Es Las Chicas de Emma Cline, es Inocencia Interrumpida cuando Lisa le habla a Daisy de su “carcelero” (casualmente también su padre). Son todas esas chicas, muchas jóvenes, que se toparon o se involucraron con hombres detestables, manipuladores y posesivos. Hombres que saben exactamente qué decir y cómo, “qué lazo de palabras atar al cuello” diría la autora. Son violaciones sistemáticas en las que no hay ni deseo ni consentimiento, además de la enorme diferencia de poderes.
Antes de El Beso el incesto estuvo reflejado en varias de sus novelas, hasta que por fin Kathryn decidió exorcizar a sus demonios en estas memorias, polémicas y complejas.
Tras este episodio de su vida, estudió en la Universidad de Stanford. Adoptó el apellido de su marido, Colin Harrison, y actualmente vive en Nueva York con él y sus hijos.
October 1, 2012
A very disturbing book in its taboo subject matter (father/daughter incest), "The Kiss" is an incredibly honest and well-written memoir. As a therapist reading such a sad, dysfunctional narrative, I couldn't help but feel a sense of deju vu....the narrative of "The Kiss" paralleling those of similar stories I've heard within the office walls of client sessions over the years. Tragic that this (incest) happens more than society is aware. Power, control, and shame are a potent formula for instilling secrecy in the trauma survivor. Finding the words to express the unspeakable to anyone is daunting enough, whether telling a trusted family member, friend, or even a therapist. Kathryn Harrison goes above and beyond, blowing the reader out of the water with her courage to make a traumatic experience public knowledge....and in the process conveying both a sense of hope and resiliency for incest survivors everywhere.
Read
February 10, 2015*** NO RATING ***
Hmm. where do I begin ?
Believe it or not I AM a cautious reviewer. I do not wish to offend, dismiss nor ignore Mrs. Harrison or any authors feelings for that matter. We are all human beings and words can be universally hurtful. (*stepping down from my soap box*) With that being said, I am going to try and state my opinions the best way I can without channeling my inner asshole.
Here goes...
While I commend Mrs. Harrison's bravery in sharing such a difficult time in her life, her memoir left me confused and struggling to characterize her as a "victim".
Why the uncertainty ? Great question! As it just so happens, I highlighted the passages that puzzled me .
Exhibit A:
In years to come, I won’t be able to remember even one instance of our lying together. I’ll have a composite generic memory. I’ll know that he was always on top and that I always lay still, as still as if I had, in truth, fallen from a great height. I’ll remember such details as the color of the carpet in a particular motel room, or the kind of tree outside the window. That he always wore his socks and that I wore whatever I could. I’ll remember every tiny thing about him. I will be able to close my eyes and see the pattern of hair that grew on the backs of his hands, the mole on his cheek, the lines, each one of them, at the corners of his eyes. <--- This sounds more like photographic memory rather than "generic"
Exhibit B:
But I won’t be able to remember what it felt like. (won't or can't??) No matter how hard I try, pushing myself to inhabit my past, I’ll recoil from what will always seem impossible. Asleep. There’s the cottony somnolence of my days. There’s the little trick of selective self-anesthesia that leaves me awake to certain things and dead to others. There are drugs and alcohol, and there is food, too much or too little, with which to bludgeon the senses. Over time I make use of each of these, and perhaps others of which I am still not aware. Sleep in response to unbearable desire , I have learned this from my mother. . . . Now, I'm no expert on the human psyche, nor have I suffered from selective self anesthesia but I've been in denial once, twice... okay, a few times and her admission mirrors my thoughts when I refuse to believe the truth.
Exhibit C;
I’m frightened. I want to avoid contemplating the enormity of what we’re doing an act that defines me, that explains who I am, because in it is all the hurt and anger and hunger of my past, and in it, too, is the future. It’s anger that frightens me most. I sleep to escape my rage. . . . So those feelings she can remember in vivid detail, but the feelings that accompany penetration have vanished completely ?
And the peace de resistance :
sleep to escape my rag. Not at him, but at my mother. To avoid owning a fury so destructive that I would take from her what brief love she has known, because she has been so unwilling for so long to love me just a little. The other object of my anger is myself. . . . AT HER MOTHER??? I don't give a flying fuck if her mother was an abusive crack whore ( which she wasn't) The affair between Kathryn and Daddy Dearest started when she was 20 years old, her mother did not instigate their affair, in fact her mother suspects something is going on between her daughter and ex-husband so she takes Kathryn to speak with a psychiatrist.
Oops, one more . . .
"She gets to the point without preamble. “I think they’re having sex, “
she says. The doctor turns to me, his eyebrows raised, and I lie as I have never lied before or since. I’m a bad liar, generally, but on this afternoon, wearing what I’m wearing, I am brilliant. “It just looks bad, ” I tell him. “I know why she’s worried.
But … it’s just that… ” I falter. “See, I never knew my father.
I’m going through a stage, like all little girls, just later than most.
” I pause at exactly the right moments. My performance is so good that I’m frightened. Is my personality so unformed that putting on a dress is enough to change it? Or is this shameless, sexual, purple-clad girl someone I can’t imagine as a friend a part of me? “She’s right, ” I say, nodding. “I am in love with him, but it… I’m not.
.. I’d never… I wouldn’t do that. ” The doctor looks at me sitting before him in my vulgar dress, and he believes me. I know it. <----- Does this sound like a 20 something victim to you ?
. . . I found the memoir as a whole to be rather distorted. I'm still uncertain if Kathryn lost her virginity when she was 17, to a dildo or to her father. Mrs. Harrison's recollection of events are in no particular order and we are arely given dates so I had no idea how old Kathryn was when incidents took place. I do have a few more opinions but I feel like I'm teetering the line towards assholism so I 'm going to stop while I'm still considered a respectful reviewer. I hope.
**Special thanks to Carla, Ashlee and Lucy for listening to metalk shit vent via phone, text and personal message. . . . . Hey, I never said I was an angel. MWAH !!**
Hmm. where do I begin ?
Believe it or not I AM a cautious reviewer. I do not wish to offend, dismiss nor ignore Mrs. Harrison or any authors feelings for that matter. We are all human beings and words can be universally hurtful. (*stepping down from my soap box*) With that being said, I am going to try and state my opinions the best way I can without channeling my inner asshole.
Here goes...
While I commend Mrs. Harrison's bravery in sharing such a difficult time in her life, her memoir left me confused and struggling to characterize her as a "victim".
Why the uncertainty ? Great question! As it just so happens, I highlighted the passages that puzzled me .
Exhibit A:
In years to come, I won’t be able to remember even one instance of our lying together. I’ll have a composite generic memory. I’ll know that he was always on top and that I always lay still, as still as if I had, in truth, fallen from a great height. I’ll remember such details as the color of the carpet in a particular motel room, or the kind of tree outside the window. That he always wore his socks and that I wore whatever I could. I’ll remember every tiny thing about him. I will be able to close my eyes and see the pattern of hair that grew on the backs of his hands, the mole on his cheek, the lines, each one of them, at the corners of his eyes. <--- This sounds more like photographic memory rather than "generic"
Exhibit B:
But I won’t be able to remember what it felt like. (won't or can't??) No matter how hard I try, pushing myself to inhabit my past, I’ll recoil from what will always seem impossible. Asleep. There’s the cottony somnolence of my days. There’s the little trick of selective self-anesthesia that leaves me awake to certain things and dead to others. There are drugs and alcohol, and there is food, too much or too little, with which to bludgeon the senses. Over time I make use of each of these, and perhaps others of which I am still not aware. Sleep in response to unbearable desire , I have learned this from my mother. . . . Now, I'm no expert on the human psyche, nor have I suffered from selective self anesthesia but I've been in denial once, twice... okay, a few times and her admission mirrors my thoughts when I refuse to believe the truth.
Exhibit C;
I’m frightened. I want to avoid contemplating the enormity of what we’re doing an act that defines me, that explains who I am, because in it is all the hurt and anger and hunger of my past, and in it, too, is the future. It’s anger that frightens me most. I sleep to escape my rage. . . . So those feelings she can remember in vivid detail, but the feelings that accompany penetration have vanished completely ?
And the peace de resistance :
sleep to escape my rag. Not at him, but at my mother. To avoid owning a fury so destructive that I would take from her what brief love she has known, because she has been so unwilling for so long to love me just a little. The other object of my anger is myself. . . . AT HER MOTHER??? I don't give a flying fuck if her mother was an abusive crack whore ( which she wasn't) The affair between Kathryn and Daddy Dearest started when she was 20 years old, her mother did not instigate their affair, in fact her mother suspects something is going on between her daughter and ex-husband so she takes Kathryn to speak with a psychiatrist.
Oops, one more . . .
"She gets to the point without preamble. “I think they’re having sex, “
she says. The doctor turns to me, his eyebrows raised, and I lie as I have never lied before or since. I’m a bad liar, generally, but on this afternoon, wearing what I’m wearing, I am brilliant. “It just looks bad, ” I tell him. “I know why she’s worried.
But … it’s just that… ” I falter. “See, I never knew my father.
I’m going through a stage, like all little girls, just later than most.
” I pause at exactly the right moments. My performance is so good that I’m frightened. Is my personality so unformed that putting on a dress is enough to change it? Or is this shameless, sexual, purple-clad girl someone I can’t imagine as a friend a part of me? “She’s right, ” I say, nodding. “I am in love with him, but it… I’m not.
.. I’d never… I wouldn’t do that. ” The doctor looks at me sitting before him in my vulgar dress, and he believes me. I know it. <----- Does this sound like a 20 something victim to you ?
. . . I found the memoir as a whole to be rather distorted. I'm still uncertain if Kathryn lost her virginity when she was 17, to a dildo or to her father. Mrs. Harrison's recollection of events are in no particular order and we are arely given dates so I had no idea how old Kathryn was when incidents took place. I do have a few more opinions but I feel like I'm teetering the line towards assholism so I 'm going to stop while I'm still considered a respectful reviewer. I hope.
**Special thanks to Carla, Ashlee and Lucy for listening to me
June 28, 2015
Kathryn Harrison was a pretty big deal in the 1990s. At the time, she’d written three literary novels. Of these three, one was about a sexual relationship between a father and his grown biological daughter. Another was about a woman whose father, a famous photographer, had taken inappropriate photos of his daughter as a child and then put them on display for everyone to see. With her fourth book, The Kiss, Kathryn Harrison finally wrote what she’d apparently been trying to write all along—a memoir about her own sexual relationship with her (till then estranged) biological father, which occurred when she was 20 and he was around 40.
I had read Harrison’s second novel, Exposure, in the early 1990s and didn’t think much of it at the time, although in retrospect I may just not have been sophisticated enough to appreciate it. I bought The Kiss because of all the (understandable) attention it got when it was published, but I left it on the shelf for years because … honestly, who wants to read about such things?
I don’t know what drew me to this now, but frankly I started this book expecting to feel nothing but my own sense of superiority. No matter how bad my life gets, at least I will never do something this bad, this crazy. And of course, that’s still true. But this brief book, with its beautiful, appropriately overwrought prose, made me understand why Kathryn Harrison’s life took this turn. If you’ve always felt out of place in your own family, and then someone suddenly turns up who finally makes you feel like you belong somewhere, what might you be willing to do to hold on to that feeling? Most of us wouldn’t give the same answer as the 20-year-old Harrison, but we can at least understand the question. With The Kiss, I felt that I was living this period in Harrison’s life along with her, and I couldn’t help but admire her bravery at admitting to this, one of the most difficult things a person could ever admit to in their lifetime.
A few reviewers here on Goodreads seem to be invested in pointing out that Harrison consented to her relationship with her father and therefore is not really a victim. I find this line of thinking beside the point. It’s true, she didn’t have to do what she did, but that doesn’t mean she can’t regret it. It doesn’t mean she can’t look back on one of the most confused, desperate times in her life and try to figure out what happened and why. Harrison’s own complicity is part of what gives the book its power.
In the end, though, this is as much a book about Harrison’s relationship with her mother as it is about her relationship with her father, and the scenes with her mother provide some of the most moving and indelible passages. Her father remains something of a shadow figure, and that’s only appropriate given the darkness he left in his wake.
I had read Harrison’s second novel, Exposure, in the early 1990s and didn’t think much of it at the time, although in retrospect I may just not have been sophisticated enough to appreciate it. I bought The Kiss because of all the (understandable) attention it got when it was published, but I left it on the shelf for years because … honestly, who wants to read about such things?
I don’t know what drew me to this now, but frankly I started this book expecting to feel nothing but my own sense of superiority. No matter how bad my life gets, at least I will never do something this bad, this crazy. And of course, that’s still true. But this brief book, with its beautiful, appropriately overwrought prose, made me understand why Kathryn Harrison’s life took this turn. If you’ve always felt out of place in your own family, and then someone suddenly turns up who finally makes you feel like you belong somewhere, what might you be willing to do to hold on to that feeling? Most of us wouldn’t give the same answer as the 20-year-old Harrison, but we can at least understand the question. With The Kiss, I felt that I was living this period in Harrison’s life along with her, and I couldn’t help but admire her bravery at admitting to this, one of the most difficult things a person could ever admit to in their lifetime.
A few reviewers here on Goodreads seem to be invested in pointing out that Harrison consented to her relationship with her father and therefore is not really a victim. I find this line of thinking beside the point. It’s true, she didn’t have to do what she did, but that doesn’t mean she can’t regret it. It doesn’t mean she can’t look back on one of the most confused, desperate times in her life and try to figure out what happened and why. Harrison’s own complicity is part of what gives the book its power.
In the end, though, this is as much a book about Harrison’s relationship with her mother as it is about her relationship with her father, and the scenes with her mother provide some of the most moving and indelible passages. Her father remains something of a shadow figure, and that’s only appropriate given the darkness he left in his wake.
August 28, 2008
Yawn. Admittedly, she didn't have the best childhood, but on the other hand she grew up in a stable household with her grandparents, enough money, education, etc. And I don't buy that her father "manipulated" her into a relationship. She was 20 years old, she could make her own choices at that point, especially when it involved voluntarily travelling long distances to meet him. Not that I was looking for details (yuck), but I also don't buy that she "doesn't remember" any of the times that she had sex with him.
I didn't find this memoir disturbing or harrowing in the least, just pointless.
I didn't find this memoir disturbing or harrowing in the least, just pointless.
August 7, 2020
This is a bold, fearless, extremely well written- but, given the material, I cannot say I really liked the book. On writing merit alone, Harrison has five stars from me. Her writing structure, choice of words, & really, the lack of words, causes this to be the most in-your-face honest confession. I truly admire her for writing & publishing her story. I don't say that lightly, like others do for almost any memoir- because with her children & husband, this was quite a brave move.
The father, of course, is a pastor. He is clearly, f*cked for doing this. Furthermore, he has sex with her for the first time in his mothers, Harrison's grandmothers' home. He then proceeds to have sex with her in the church. Of course. What is it with these religious- should I say "religious" men?
It is, again, very well written. Harrison doesn't hide from the truth. She doesn't use the victim card like most would in her position, though she would not be completely wrong if she had. She doesn't take a wholly innocent position in regard to her love affair & sexual escapades with her father. What makes this worse is that she knew exactly what she was doing, although obviously clouded by various familial relationships, etc. She was twenty years old when this love affair began. Essentially, she is saying that it was some complicated way she used, unknown to herself at the time, to exact revenge on her mother, the person she loves the most in the world, but failed to give her the love she deserved as a girl. The fact that she sits in the same room as her mother & father, all three of them knowing (although not voicing) the fact that both women are having sexual relations with Harrisons' father is truly appalling. Harrison, in the interview at the end of the book, says this. She says she is still shocked by her past; appalled.
Thus, I cannot say I actually liked reading the book- because I didn't. It was actually a little hard for me to read it straight through, as I found myself so offended by the story- but, as this is the truth, I whole heartedly support Harrison telling her story. We know that this occurs in this world; the fact that someone so successful, beautiful, & who has a family now is willing to share her exceptionally well written account without using the "Poor me" Victim card is pretty much all I need to say!
The father, of course, is a pastor. He is clearly, f*cked for doing this. Furthermore, he has sex with her for the first time in his mothers, Harrison's grandmothers' home. He then proceeds to have sex with her in the church. Of course. What is it with these religious- should I say "religious" men?
It is, again, very well written. Harrison doesn't hide from the truth. She doesn't use the victim card like most would in her position, though she would not be completely wrong if she had. She doesn't take a wholly innocent position in regard to her love affair & sexual escapades with her father. What makes this worse is that she knew exactly what she was doing, although obviously clouded by various familial relationships, etc. She was twenty years old when this love affair began. Essentially, she is saying that it was some complicated way she used, unknown to herself at the time, to exact revenge on her mother, the person she loves the most in the world, but failed to give her the love she deserved as a girl. The fact that she sits in the same room as her mother & father, all three of them knowing (although not voicing) the fact that both women are having sexual relations with Harrisons' father is truly appalling. Harrison, in the interview at the end of the book, says this. She says she is still shocked by her past; appalled.
Thus, I cannot say I actually liked reading the book- because I didn't. It was actually a little hard for me to read it straight through, as I found myself so offended by the story- but, as this is the truth, I whole heartedly support Harrison telling her story. We know that this occurs in this world; the fact that someone so successful, beautiful, & who has a family now is willing to share her exceptionally well written account without using the "Poor me" Victim card is pretty much all I need to say!
September 11, 2017
Kinda creepy to craft your own shame into MFA-style writing.
Like, "the kiss" is the first tongue kiss her dad gives her, which becomes a neat poetic catalyst and central event brought throughout the narrative. Rather than a thing that makes you go EWWWWWWWWW EWWWWWW EWWWW, right? I found an example quote:
It's just not the time or place for well-crafted, aloof sentences of pontification. Even creepier that it's some chosen turning point or denouement. Like, what did that shortlist look like?!!
Similarly she rambled a bit about touching baby kittens before they were ready to be touched and they get their eyes infected and she's milked this one moment because, no lady's memoir is complete without a bit of random symbolic animal torture! Isn't there a bit in Cheryl Strayed's memoir about shooting a horse? I skipped it because I could feel how much it was trying to make me cry. Is that what they teach them at the Iowa Writer's Workshop? "Hey Kath loved this first draft but did you ever hurt a small animal in your youth? You could really make this chapter pop!"
So as I say the creepiest thing about this book is how it's been constructed.
Like, "the kiss" is the first tongue kiss her dad gives her, which becomes a neat poetic catalyst and central event brought throughout the narrative. Rather than a thing that makes you go EWWWWWWWWW EWWWWWW EWWWW, right? I found an example quote:
''In years to come, I'll think of the kiss as a kind of transforming sting, like that of a scorpion: a narcotic that spreads from my mouth to my brain. The kiss is the point at which I begin, slowly, inexorably, to fall asleep, to surrender volition, to become paralyzed. It's the drug my father administers in order that he might consume me. That I might desire to be consumed.''
It's just not the time or place for well-crafted, aloof sentences of pontification. Even creepier that it's some chosen turning point or denouement. Like, what did that shortlist look like?!!
Similarly she rambled a bit about touching baby kittens before they were ready to be touched and they get their eyes infected and she's milked this one moment because, no lady's memoir is complete without a bit of random symbolic animal torture! Isn't there a bit in Cheryl Strayed's memoir about shooting a horse? I skipped it because I could feel how much it was trying to make me cry. Is that what they teach them at the Iowa Writer's Workshop? "Hey Kath loved this first draft but did you ever hurt a small animal in your youth? You could really make this chapter pop!"
So as I say the creepiest thing about this book is how it's been constructed.
January 2, 2010
The Kiss is one of the few books that I can find within the subject of consensual incest, yet the author seems unaware that she fits this category. It is as if she isn't twenty years old, but five, and indeed the way the book is written, I would tend to agree. She leaps around her lifetime with no discernible pattern. Sometimes she is young, sometimes the relationship is over, and it was incredibly hard to follow.
We know that the author has control issues because she reveals that she has anorexia, which often follows a sense of control loss. She tries to vilify her father for entering into a relationship with her, though from the way it comes across, I don't think that she ever indicated to him that it wasn't what she wanted. She just sort of goes along with everything, so he must have thought himself very lucky.
The incest itself is biological only, since she was not raised by him and only met him a few times before they started their affair. So it is hard to imagine her being taken advantage of by him as a father, since she has only known him as an acquaintance.
Any adult relationship has the potential of being emotionally abusive, which is what she claims this was for her, but if it was, it seems to have been caused by her own hang-ups more than any actions on his part. She is such a head-case by the time she is twenty that I think practically any relationship she entered into would have been detrimental.
We know that the author has control issues because she reveals that she has anorexia, which often follows a sense of control loss. She tries to vilify her father for entering into a relationship with her, though from the way it comes across, I don't think that she ever indicated to him that it wasn't what she wanted. She just sort of goes along with everything, so he must have thought himself very lucky.
The incest itself is biological only, since she was not raised by him and only met him a few times before they started their affair. So it is hard to imagine her being taken advantage of by him as a father, since she has only known him as an acquaintance.
Any adult relationship has the potential of being emotionally abusive, which is what she claims this was for her, but if it was, it seems to have been caused by her own hang-ups more than any actions on his part. She is such a head-case by the time she is twenty that I think practically any relationship she entered into would have been detrimental.
January 7, 2015
This book was difficult to read. The subject of incest is torturous, but Harrison's writing was beautiful, exquisitely distinctive.
Some critics said she was a fully grown adult when the affair began. She was twenty and had an eating disorder that diminished her breasts and stopped her period. She had not seen her father since she was ten, and even then it was brief. She was a child. Having had no father daughter relationship with him, she had to be even more childlike in his presence. Though she was not technically a child, she was his child.
Her father asserted that "their relationship was different," unlike that of any other father and daughter. It was indeed different, because he was monstrous.
My heart broke again and again for Kathryn Harrison as I read this book. Part of me worries that to this day she might not realize how innocent she was.
Despite the tragedy of her story, with it Harrison gave us a beautiful gift. It has been an especially timely gift for me as I read it. Her real transformation came at the death of her grandfather. She writes, "The service takes place just after Hanukkah, and the rabbi reminds us of lighting candles. He asks that we cherish the memory of my grandfather, who died during the feast of lights, that for him, we go forth as brightly as possible and make our lives those of illumination, not of darkness." I am currently in mourning for my mother and father. As I move forward I will remember her words and make my own life a life of illumination, not of darkness.
Thank you Kathryn.
Some critics said she was a fully grown adult when the affair began. She was twenty and had an eating disorder that diminished her breasts and stopped her period. She had not seen her father since she was ten, and even then it was brief. She was a child. Having had no father daughter relationship with him, she had to be even more childlike in his presence. Though she was not technically a child, she was his child.
Her father asserted that "their relationship was different," unlike that of any other father and daughter. It was indeed different, because he was monstrous.
My heart broke again and again for Kathryn Harrison as I read this book. Part of me worries that to this day she might not realize how innocent she was.
Despite the tragedy of her story, with it Harrison gave us a beautiful gift. It has been an especially timely gift for me as I read it. Her real transformation came at the death of her grandfather. She writes, "The service takes place just after Hanukkah, and the rabbi reminds us of lighting candles. He asks that we cherish the memory of my grandfather, who died during the feast of lights, that for him, we go forth as brightly as possible and make our lives those of illumination, not of darkness." I am currently in mourning for my mother and father. As I move forward I will remember her words and make my own life a life of illumination, not of darkness.
Thank you Kathryn.
January 23, 2008
This book is disturbing. Well, the subject matter is disturbing (an affair she has with her father).
I feel great respect for the bravery that went into writing it. Something bugs me which is that after all of that, she didn't go into the healing part of the trauma. Well, maybe that was the point. It was all so starkly written, which definitely gave you the impression of being there. You get it. The feeling of being stuck, of her body and mind freezing over--it's very visceral. I just also wanted to be taken...to the next stage. At the end she woke up and felt released, separated from her father, and now is married and has a life, but she also says that she and her husband keep that whole relationship "in a box on a high shelf out of reach". That doesn't sound like it's really been healed. I want to know how someone heals from something like that, not just is "released" as she puts it. And I want to go on that journey with her through the book. But it ends and it almost seems wistful, unfinished to me.
I feel great respect for the bravery that went into writing it. Something bugs me which is that after all of that, she didn't go into the healing part of the trauma. Well, maybe that was the point. It was all so starkly written, which definitely gave you the impression of being there. You get it. The feeling of being stuck, of her body and mind freezing over--it's very visceral. I just also wanted to be taken...to the next stage. At the end she woke up and felt released, separated from her father, and now is married and has a life, but she also says that she and her husband keep that whole relationship "in a box on a high shelf out of reach". That doesn't sound like it's really been healed. I want to know how someone heals from something like that, not just is "released" as she puts it. And I want to go on that journey with her through the book. But it ends and it almost seems wistful, unfinished to me.
January 23, 2009
This book is haunting, and not only for the reasons one might think from the book jacket. It is sprinkled with reminders of what we all do when we live in darkness and loneliness; the explorations of our world (and self) that end up traumatizing us, that we never tell anyone else about. These are the scenes in this book I will never forget... and won't expound upon, because I want it to hit you just as hard when you read this book.
The structure of The Kiss isn't always chronological, linear, or seemingly logical, but it flows well, and from an obviously organic place. The author maintains a strong literary voice despite the passion of the subject matter, and manages to maintain an articulate distance while bringing the reader within full-view of what happened, and the agony it brought. It doesn't get too psychological, but her analysis (likely after years of professional analysis) not only help the reader understand her ultimate motivations and experience, but our own.
The structure of The Kiss isn't always chronological, linear, or seemingly logical, but it flows well, and from an obviously organic place. The author maintains a strong literary voice despite the passion of the subject matter, and manages to maintain an articulate distance while bringing the reader within full-view of what happened, and the agony it brought. It doesn't get too psychological, but her analysis (likely after years of professional analysis) not only help the reader understand her ultimate motivations and experience, but our own.
February 16, 2015
1 star is too many.......
When reading a memoir it helps if one can relate or sympathize with the author, unfortunately for me I could not understand, relate, or have any compassion for Ms. Harrison. She paints herself as an incest survivor who falls for the manipulations of her father, but by the end of this memoir I just wasn't buying what Ms. Harrison was selling. In fact I was left wondering if the events in this memoir are even true.
So basically Ms. Harrison had a not so great childhood. She says her mother didn't love her enough and was cold and emotionally absent, her grandparents who helped raise her paid off her father to divorce the mom and abandon Kathryn So as a young adult Kathryn is pissed at her mother for not being there emotionally and angry that her father was absent from her life.
**Ok first of all Kathryn should thank her grandparents every single day for banishing that pervert father of hers. I really felt bad for the other children this sick man had with his second wife, I hope he didn't violate any of them. **
At 20 yrs of age, the father re-enters Kathryn's life. During their first meeting this creep who is now re-married has sex with his first wife, Katherine listens and is jealous, then the next morning he tells his daughter that he didn't want to have sex with her mother that he did it out of kindness because she asked him too. What a peach! Kathryn then drives her father to the airport, at the airport he kisses her. The kiss on the lips at first is chaste until he slips her the tongue and the kiss turns passionate(barf!) Hmmm so what does Katherine do? Does she tell her mom that her dad is a freak who tried to tongue kiss her? Nope! She doesn't because......
“As for my mother, she is the last person I would tell about the kiss, she’s the one most likely to respond hysterically, even violently. She would prevent me from ever seeing my father again. And I can’t not see him again. From the time he left me, my first thought, the one that pushes aside my fears about the kiss, has been When. When will I see him again? When will we be together?”
Does Kathryn decide to never see her father again because he is pervy nasty man? Nope! She begins meeting him and starts having sex with him.
So now we come to the part that totally made me rage, the reason why Kathryn sleeps with her father is to get back at her mom! I get it, she had a shitty mom who wasn't there for her but dang there is no need to resort to incest just to get back at mom. But that's what she did....check out some of these passages.....
“Our words about love are, like most people’s, unoriginal, unmemorable, but my father and I have a subject more consuming than love, Her. Love’s object. My mother. His wife. We’re locked in the kind of sympathy for each other that only two people spurned by the same woman could feel. Through her, in thrall to her, spiting her the person neither of us could ever know or possess we hold on to each other. She is more compelling than we are, because she always eludes. She is mysterious, whereas we are only too eager to bare ourselves. With words, my father and I lay open the organs of love.”
“My father vilifies my mother and her parents. I defend them, but they have hurt me, too. It’s a relief to hear someone say that my young, beautiful mother, whom all my friends jealously admire, is a narcissist, that she’s selfish and cruel as only the weak can because cruelty is all she has to keep herself safe”
“My father no longer makes the gesture of taking one photograph of my mother for every one of me, and not only his camera has shifted its focus. In my mother’s home, both of us her guests, my father and I forsake her, our former object of devotion, for each other”
“It’s anger that frightens me most. I sleep to escape my rage. Not at him, but at my mother. To avoid owning a fury so destructive that I would take from her what brief love she has known, because she has been so unwilling for so long to love me just a little”
So yeah a 20 year old adult decides to have an incestious affair with her father just to spite her mother. I was just left shaking my head.
Lastly this line in the book just made me laugh.......
“I’ll think of the kiss as a kind of transforming sting, like that of a scorpion, a narcotic that spreads from my mouth to my brain. The kiss is the point at which I begin, slowly, inexorably, to fall asleep, to surrender volition, to become paralyzed. It’s “the drug my father administers in order that he might consume me. That I might desire to be consumed”
In my opinion if you want to read a memoir dealing with "consensual" father/daughter incest go read the diary of Anais Nin. The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934 I'm not sure Ms. Nin's accounts are all that truthful either but at least Nin tells an entertaining story unlike this boring memoir.
When reading a memoir it helps if one can relate or sympathize with the author, unfortunately for me I could not understand, relate, or have any compassion for Ms. Harrison. She paints herself as an incest survivor who falls for the manipulations of her father, but by the end of this memoir I just wasn't buying what Ms. Harrison was selling. In fact I was left wondering if the events in this memoir are even true.
So basically Ms. Harrison had a not so great childhood. She says her mother didn't love her enough and was cold and emotionally absent, her grandparents who helped raise her paid off her father to divorce the mom and abandon Kathryn So as a young adult Kathryn is pissed at her mother for not being there emotionally and angry that her father was absent from her life.
**Ok first of all Kathryn should thank her grandparents every single day for banishing that pervert father of hers. I really felt bad for the other children this sick man had with his second wife, I hope he didn't violate any of them. **
At 20 yrs of age, the father re-enters Kathryn's life. During their first meeting this creep who is now re-married has sex with his first wife, Katherine listens and is jealous, then the next morning he tells his daughter that he didn't want to have sex with her mother that he did it out of kindness because she asked him too. What a peach! Kathryn then drives her father to the airport, at the airport he kisses her. The kiss on the lips at first is chaste until he slips her the tongue and the kiss turns passionate(barf!) Hmmm so what does Katherine do? Does she tell her mom that her dad is a freak who tried to tongue kiss her? Nope! She doesn't because......
“As for my mother, she is the last person I would tell about the kiss, she’s the one most likely to respond hysterically, even violently. She would prevent me from ever seeing my father again. And I can’t not see him again. From the time he left me, my first thought, the one that pushes aside my fears about the kiss, has been When. When will I see him again? When will we be together?”
Does Kathryn decide to never see her father again because he is pervy nasty man? Nope! She begins meeting him and starts having sex with him.
So now we come to the part that totally made me rage, the reason why Kathryn sleeps with her father is to get back at her mom! I get it, she had a shitty mom who wasn't there for her but dang there is no need to resort to incest just to get back at mom. But that's what she did....check out some of these passages.....
“Our words about love are, like most people’s, unoriginal, unmemorable, but my father and I have a subject more consuming than love, Her. Love’s object. My mother. His wife. We’re locked in the kind of sympathy for each other that only two people spurned by the same woman could feel. Through her, in thrall to her, spiting her the person neither of us could ever know or possess we hold on to each other. She is more compelling than we are, because she always eludes. She is mysterious, whereas we are only too eager to bare ourselves. With words, my father and I lay open the organs of love.”
“My father vilifies my mother and her parents. I defend them, but they have hurt me, too. It’s a relief to hear someone say that my young, beautiful mother, whom all my friends jealously admire, is a narcissist, that she’s selfish and cruel as only the weak can because cruelty is all she has to keep herself safe”
“My father no longer makes the gesture of taking one photograph of my mother for every one of me, and not only his camera has shifted its focus. In my mother’s home, both of us her guests, my father and I forsake her, our former object of devotion, for each other”
“It’s anger that frightens me most. I sleep to escape my rage. Not at him, but at my mother. To avoid owning a fury so destructive that I would take from her what brief love she has known, because she has been so unwilling for so long to love me just a little”
So yeah a 20 year old adult decides to have an incestious affair with her father just to spite her mother. I was just left shaking my head.
Lastly this line in the book just made me laugh.......
“I’ll think of the kiss as a kind of transforming sting, like that of a scorpion, a narcotic that spreads from my mouth to my brain. The kiss is the point at which I begin, slowly, inexorably, to fall asleep, to surrender volition, to become paralyzed. It’s “the drug my father administers in order that he might consume me. That I might desire to be consumed”
In my opinion if you want to read a memoir dealing with "consensual" father/daughter incest go read the diary of Anais Nin. The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934 I'm not sure Ms. Nin's accounts are all that truthful either but at least Nin tells an entertaining story unlike this boring memoir.
August 5, 2016
I'm giving this a 3 because I remember not hating this but also being quite disturbed by the subject matter. If I remember correctly, I may not have liked the style of writing. The one thing I do remember about this book is how the first sexual encounter happened and it was just too disturbing for me. Read this years ago and was probably too young to have read this but also too curious to want to read about something so taboo.
February 15, 2010
I was morbidly drawn to this book when I read it described as a memoir about a woman's "consensual affair with her father." I wondered, what circumstances could make an affair with one's father consensual; did she not know he was her father? Did she grow up without him, and not see him as a father figure when they finally met?
It turns out that she did grow up without him in her life, but it's a stretch to call their affair consensual. It begins when Kathryn is 20 years old, meeting her father for the second time in her life. When they part at the airport, he French kisses her, and thus begins their non-platonic relationship. Nonetheless, the story still smacks of all the conventions of sexual abuse: shaming, secrecy, coercion. Kathryn's relationship with her father was abusive to say the least, and it left me feeling as if he really was an awful person, one who should have known to get some serious help.
Despite Kathryn's being an adult when the affair started, the power dynamic keeps it from feeling consensual or ethical. I can hardly imagine living the kind of life Kathryn lived as her father's "secret lover," but it was difficult to stay with Kathryn's "victimized" tone, to read about all the ways in which she self-destructed (self-harm, anorexia, bulimia, etc.), and the way she pinned her vulnerability on a lack of affection from her mother felt a bit too much like the "poor me" card -- I would have she rather placed the blame where it really belonged, which was on her father. She manages to skirt around the more intimate details of their affair by claiming that she doesn't "remember" them, something that doesn't feel authentic to me, but which is a fair allowance to give.
The writing in the first half of this book is vivid and compelling, but the second half reads more like an early draft. The book also lacks hope, despite the fact that we know that, somehow, Kathryn managed to move on, marry, and raise a family. In some ways, 207 pages are just too few to do a subject matter this complex justice. I found myself caring about her enough to want to know how things really happened, to see the healing half of the journey. But unfortunately, this memoir only offers the suffering, with only vaguely implied redemption.
It turns out that she did grow up without him in her life, but it's a stretch to call their affair consensual. It begins when Kathryn is 20 years old, meeting her father for the second time in her life. When they part at the airport, he French kisses her, and thus begins their non-platonic relationship. Nonetheless, the story still smacks of all the conventions of sexual abuse: shaming, secrecy, coercion. Kathryn's relationship with her father was abusive to say the least, and it left me feeling as if he really was an awful person, one who should have known to get some serious help.
Despite Kathryn's being an adult when the affair started, the power dynamic keeps it from feeling consensual or ethical. I can hardly imagine living the kind of life Kathryn lived as her father's "secret lover," but it was difficult to stay with Kathryn's "victimized" tone, to read about all the ways in which she self-destructed (self-harm, anorexia, bulimia, etc.), and the way she pinned her vulnerability on a lack of affection from her mother felt a bit too much like the "poor me" card -- I would have she rather placed the blame where it really belonged, which was on her father. She manages to skirt around the more intimate details of their affair by claiming that she doesn't "remember" them, something that doesn't feel authentic to me, but which is a fair allowance to give.
The writing in the first half of this book is vivid and compelling, but the second half reads more like an early draft. The book also lacks hope, despite the fact that we know that, somehow, Kathryn managed to move on, marry, and raise a family. In some ways, 207 pages are just too few to do a subject matter this complex justice. I found myself caring about her enough to want to know how things really happened, to see the healing half of the journey. But unfortunately, this memoir only offers the suffering, with only vaguely implied redemption.
May 10, 2007
There was a time when all I read by Kathryn Harrison spoke to me deeply, and this memoir was the first of those things. I now chalk that period up to needing higher dosage of better drugs.
This memoir is ... all the words that have been attributed to it. Lyrical at times, provocative, sad, haunting. It is deeply troubling, more than anything, and Harrison's willingness to dive right in and put her life - and her father's - on display is what lingers to trouble me now, years after her artful prose drew me in. In retrospect, I can't help wondering what her motivation is, and I'm almost cynical enough to suggest that Harrison saw the 1990s' trend of revealing personal nightmares in poetic writing and decided to capitalize on her own. Eh. Whatever. The writing is compelling, and her unflinching look at herself humbles me. Is it an honest stance? (Does it matter?)
This memoir is ... all the words that have been attributed to it. Lyrical at times, provocative, sad, haunting. It is deeply troubling, more than anything, and Harrison's willingness to dive right in and put her life - and her father's - on display is what lingers to trouble me now, years after her artful prose drew me in. In retrospect, I can't help wondering what her motivation is, and I'm almost cynical enough to suggest that Harrison saw the 1990s' trend of revealing personal nightmares in poetic writing and decided to capitalize on her own. Eh. Whatever. The writing is compelling, and her unflinching look at herself humbles me. Is it an honest stance? (Does it matter?)
January 30, 2008
Difficult book to read. The subject matter is enough to make almost anyone sqeamish. If you can get past the jeebies, you will find a well written account of a woman's deep psychological need to connect with her father. The father completely exploits her vulnerability. I felt so much pity for Harrison even though she doesn't ask for it. I also felt a deep amount of respect, not many women or men would have the courage to write about something as disturbing as a sexual relationship with their father. I applaud her willingness to discuss such a sensitive subject in such a straight forward, realistic way.
April 28, 2013
first of all, props to ms. harrison for writing this book. how very brave of her to write about such a taboo subject.
this memoir is amazing and terrifying. amazing because like I said, the courage it had to of taken to sit down and relive her past and put it out there for the world to read. terrifying for obvious reasons. how a father could seduce his daughter and completely take over not only her mind but her body and soul as well. it's... it's..sad and has to be extremely frightening and confusing as she explained.
she says that she didn't know who she was and her father swoops back into her life, full force. and he keeps her from discovering who she is....when, as a rip young adult, that's exactly what she should be doing.
she goes back and forth- she knows this is wrong and... weird...but she can't stop herself from taking their relationship further. after "the kiss" she should've walked away but her need for parental love- she didnt get it from her mother, her father was forced out of her life and now hes back- is too strong. and she gets to the point where she is completely possessed by her father. and she struggles with wanting to get out but because what he's done to her mind, she doesn't think he will love her anymore and she can't bear that.
he made her feel that what he's doing to her is love. and it's... it's the opposite. it's control and lust, anger, resentment and hate-not even toward her but toward her mother(his ex-wife) and her parents who ripped him from his family and made him feel like an.. unworthy piece of trash they needed to throw out and completely rid their lives of- all tangled and twisted and knotted together.
ah, this book pulls at your heart strings. it really does. I wanted to jump in there and save her, tell her there is a world full of love out there, love for YOU. what he's done to you is wrong, and you know that, so get out. forget the feelings, he's conditioned you to feel them- they're not real. the only thing real is YOUR confusion. your innocent love for him and wanting to know your father was normal. he took that away and took advantage. I'm glad she knows that now, even if it's too late.
anyway. I loved this book in it's sick and twisted way. I've heard of estranged family members "falling in love." GENETIC SEXUAL ATTRACTION is a real thing, it's out there and It happens to many people.
so for the people who said "ew, why would she write this?" or "what a fucked up individual." remember.. writing is all about putting down the words that are not only in your head, but in your heart. I envy the writers who can write the words people dare not even speak. that's courage. once they're on paper they're around forever.. unlike when we say something and they just float around until they evaporate.
anyway. I recommend the book. it's eye opening. makes you grateful for the father you've got-it did for me- and if you don't have a loving-real love- father well, I'm sorry you didn't either.
this memoir is amazing and terrifying. amazing because like I said, the courage it had to of taken to sit down and relive her past and put it out there for the world to read. terrifying for obvious reasons. how a father could seduce his daughter and completely take over not only her mind but her body and soul as well. it's... it's..sad and has to be extremely frightening and confusing as she explained.
she says that she didn't know who she was and her father swoops back into her life, full force. and he keeps her from discovering who she is....when, as a rip young adult, that's exactly what she should be doing.
she goes back and forth- she knows this is wrong and... weird...but she can't stop herself from taking their relationship further. after "the kiss" she should've walked away but her need for parental love- she didnt get it from her mother, her father was forced out of her life and now hes back- is too strong. and she gets to the point where she is completely possessed by her father. and she struggles with wanting to get out but because what he's done to her mind, she doesn't think he will love her anymore and she can't bear that.
he made her feel that what he's doing to her is love. and it's... it's the opposite. it's control and lust, anger, resentment and hate-not even toward her but toward her mother(his ex-wife) and her parents who ripped him from his family and made him feel like an.. unworthy piece of trash they needed to throw out and completely rid their lives of- all tangled and twisted and knotted together.
ah, this book pulls at your heart strings. it really does. I wanted to jump in there and save her, tell her there is a world full of love out there, love for YOU. what he's done to you is wrong, and you know that, so get out. forget the feelings, he's conditioned you to feel them- they're not real. the only thing real is YOUR confusion. your innocent love for him and wanting to know your father was normal. he took that away and took advantage. I'm glad she knows that now, even if it's too late.
anyway. I loved this book in it's sick and twisted way. I've heard of estranged family members "falling in love." GENETIC SEXUAL ATTRACTION is a real thing, it's out there and It happens to many people.
so for the people who said "ew, why would she write this?" or "what a fucked up individual." remember.. writing is all about putting down the words that are not only in your head, but in your heart. I envy the writers who can write the words people dare not even speak. that's courage. once they're on paper they're around forever.. unlike when we say something and they just float around until they evaporate.
anyway. I recommend the book. it's eye opening. makes you grateful for the father you've got-it did for me- and if you don't have a loving-real love- father well, I'm sorry you didn't either.
March 6, 2011
I picked this up again the other day because I'm always sort of the surprised that I a) was as annoyed by it as I was/still am and b) could barely, barely get through it. Years ago, when I worked in NY publishing, took writing classes, published short stories etc, I met and spent quite some time with Kathryn Harrison, as well as with her husband, also a writer. They're both 10-15 years older than me, what I'd consider 'young baby boomers' and they were then--and apparently still are today--both obsessed on the 'young' and the 'baby boomer' (aka, self-indulgent and self-important) aspect of this tagline that surely defines them. Then, I enjoyed quite a few essays they wrote, and at times, as annoying as I found them both (they ARE annoying people!) I did enjoy the raw intelligence of their conversation.
So I always looked upon this memoir/poetic autobiography/whatever lit/psych exercise as something I'd be interested in. I find family dysfunction quite fascinating, though personally know zero about how it can cross over into sexual dysfunction. In my world, family dysfunction (my own family's, my friends' families, my personal culture) is always emotional and psychological in the modern Freudian sense. Sex never comes into it. So I went into The Kiss with trepidation over my usual fascination for familial problems.
What I found was: boredom. A continual WTF feeling. A sense of, and? And? And?
I think Kathryn Harrison suffers from many things, and believing herself important because she had a sexual 'affair', as she calls it, with her obviously amoral, immoral and deranged (as well as tone-deaf uninteresting) father is high up there on the list. One always gets the feeling--probably accurately--that despite the obviously amoral and heartbreaking truth of entering into an incestuous relationship with your sick father, Harrison is on an eternal ego trip with it nonetheless. Everywhere one gets a glimpse of her--reviewing in the NYT for eg--one can somehow hear the: "I had sex with my dad! I'm unique! I have a different POV!" Etc.
Problem is, her writing (at least here) sucks. This is not a heart-wrenching book at all. It is just plain boring, page after page of words too lofty to actually bring forth the absolute dramatic devastation of crossing a line we are brought up not to cross. If Harrison had had the honesty, perception, intelligence, talent and humility to, say, tell this story from a to b with a simple, direct language, I'd bet she'd have achieved far greater depth and painful clarity. The kind you cannot take your eyes off.
This, forget it.
So I always looked upon this memoir/poetic autobiography/whatever lit/psych exercise as something I'd be interested in. I find family dysfunction quite fascinating, though personally know zero about how it can cross over into sexual dysfunction. In my world, family dysfunction (my own family's, my friends' families, my personal culture) is always emotional and psychological in the modern Freudian sense. Sex never comes into it. So I went into The Kiss with trepidation over my usual fascination for familial problems.
What I found was: boredom. A continual WTF feeling. A sense of, and? And? And?
I think Kathryn Harrison suffers from many things, and believing herself important because she had a sexual 'affair', as she calls it, with her obviously amoral, immoral and deranged (as well as tone-deaf uninteresting) father is high up there on the list. One always gets the feeling--probably accurately--that despite the obviously amoral and heartbreaking truth of entering into an incestuous relationship with your sick father, Harrison is on an eternal ego trip with it nonetheless. Everywhere one gets a glimpse of her--reviewing in the NYT for eg--one can somehow hear the: "I had sex with my dad! I'm unique! I have a different POV!" Etc.
Problem is, her writing (at least here) sucks. This is not a heart-wrenching book at all. It is just plain boring, page after page of words too lofty to actually bring forth the absolute dramatic devastation of crossing a line we are brought up not to cross. If Harrison had had the honesty, perception, intelligence, talent and humility to, say, tell this story from a to b with a simple, direct language, I'd bet she'd have achieved far greater depth and painful clarity. The kind you cannot take your eyes off.
This, forget it.
August 6, 2010
I didn't dislike this because it shocked me or upset me. It shocked me, but it didn't upset me. Not just because I'm a desensitised teenager, either. The dreadful "purple prose" grew too much for me. I didn't want any sexual scenes between Harrison and her father, but the drifty, floaty narrative sapped any sympathy I had for Harrison, and none of it felt real. Maybe she was trying to put us in her dissociative mind, but the overdone floweriness of it all took away from the raw impact of the storyline and, to be honest, it felt more like Harrison was trying to style a novel as a memoir. It would have been fine for her to write a novel about this, but if she's going to write a memoir, I would like to see her actually write a memoir as opposed to a novel.
Honestly, it felt all a little too "poor me" for me. Harrison was too harsh on everyone - her mother, her grandparents, her friends and boyfriend. I know how horrible and painful this must have been for her to live through, but it seemed like every person (with the exception of Harrison herself) was deliberately cultivating a girl with the worst daddy issues imaginable - and, when I say that, I mean that it felt like Harrison was deliberately blaming everyone else. Her grandparents were clearly flawed, but they loved her (especially her grandfather), and Harrison felt like an immature teenager lashing out at them for her psychological problems. Both she and her father seemed ridiculously melodramatic about their relationship with Harrison's family and, honestly? I wanted to strangle them both. Two stars because I liked the present tense and there were some interesting (if inappropriate) turns of phrase.
Overview: horribly pretentious, tiresome, overwritten and unsuited to the subject matter. All of the characters were made to seem unlikeable by the holier-than-thou and irritating Harrison. Not recommended.
Honestly, it felt all a little too "poor me" for me. Harrison was too harsh on everyone - her mother, her grandparents, her friends and boyfriend. I know how horrible and painful this must have been for her to live through, but it seemed like every person (with the exception of Harrison herself) was deliberately cultivating a girl with the worst daddy issues imaginable - and, when I say that, I mean that it felt like Harrison was deliberately blaming everyone else. Her grandparents were clearly flawed, but they loved her (especially her grandfather), and Harrison felt like an immature teenager lashing out at them for her psychological problems. Both she and her father seemed ridiculously melodramatic about their relationship with Harrison's family and, honestly? I wanted to strangle them both. Two stars because I liked the present tense and there were some interesting (if inappropriate) turns of phrase.
Overview: horribly pretentious, tiresome, overwritten and unsuited to the subject matter. All of the characters were made to seem unlikeable by the holier-than-thou and irritating Harrison. Not recommended.
August 21, 2013
It began with the voice of an innocent little child saying “I’m going to read Mommy’s book for reading time tonight” – followed by Mommy’s scream of NOOOOOOO, DON’T READ THAT!!!!!. The story then moves into the kitchen where the husband asks what’s so wrong with this book that the boy-child can’t touch it? The wife’s answer? Wellllllllll, you see, it’s a memoir of a woman telling the story of her incestuous relationship with her father. Husband’s response? “You read some f*&%d up s#@t!”
I blame it all on Augusten Burroughs. While reading “Possible Side Effects”, Burroughs tells of his dream of being awarded a $57,000,000 settlement for swallowing a bottlecap (because there is no warning on bottlecaps saying they should not be swallowed). He said he would then use some of his winnings to send paperback copies of “The Kiss” to all of his friends and relatives. I immediately searched out “The Kiss” on Goodreads and after reading the synopsis laughed solidly for 10 minutes at Burroughs' warped humor.
“The Kiss” is just as disturbing as the synopsis would leave one to believe. Fortunately, it is not filled with gory details of the affair, but the raw emotion and obvious mental-health issues that go along with this darkest of taboos is palpable. As my husband so eloquently put it, this was some “f*&%d up s#@t!”
I blame it all on Augusten Burroughs. While reading “Possible Side Effects”, Burroughs tells of his dream of being awarded a $57,000,000 settlement for swallowing a bottlecap (because there is no warning on bottlecaps saying they should not be swallowed). He said he would then use some of his winnings to send paperback copies of “The Kiss” to all of his friends and relatives. I immediately searched out “The Kiss” on Goodreads and after reading the synopsis laughed solidly for 10 minutes at Burroughs' warped humor.
“The Kiss” is just as disturbing as the synopsis would leave one to believe. Fortunately, it is not filled with gory details of the affair, but the raw emotion and obvious mental-health issues that go along with this darkest of taboos is palpable. As my husband so eloquently put it, this was some “f*&%d up s#@t!”
Read
February 12, 2019Ah, Valentine's week. Love is in the air -- this being my first single Valentine's Day in some time, I've decided to celebrate by reading an icy memoir of self-harm and incest.
Too many people have called this "horrifying." The thing is, I didn't find it that way. It describes the numbness of being. The numbness that leads one to acts of casual violence, drug use, suicidal tendencies, alienation, and this instance, boning your dad. And it's written in this way that you imagine Kathryn Harrison lying numbly under a canopied bed, whispering perfect prose to no one. It almost felt like if Lolita had been the narrator instead of Humbert Humbert, and she, in the end, was more than happy to describe Humbert as a fat, sweaty weirdo who could still manage some kind of Svengali effect.
I loved it. I loved it for its honest appraisal of alienation and emotional disconnect, for its constant allusion to lurid detail without going into it. But it really, really isn't for everyone.
Too many people have called this "horrifying." The thing is, I didn't find it that way. It describes the numbness of being. The numbness that leads one to acts of casual violence, drug use, suicidal tendencies, alienation, and this instance, boning your dad. And it's written in this way that you imagine Kathryn Harrison lying numbly under a canopied bed, whispering perfect prose to no one. It almost felt like if Lolita had been the narrator instead of Humbert Humbert, and she, in the end, was more than happy to describe Humbert as a fat, sweaty weirdo who could still manage some kind of Svengali effect.
I loved it. I loved it for its honest appraisal of alienation and emotional disconnect, for its constant allusion to lurid detail without going into it. But it really, really isn't for everyone.
June 22, 2017
Someday a sentence will come to me, a magic sentence that will undo all that is wrong and make everything right. But until that sentence comes, I say nothing.
Review to come...
August 4, 2011
Saw this in Writer's Digest and thought it looked really interesting. Unfortunately, the book review I read said the author entered into a consensual sexual relationship with her father and, after reading the book, I can tell you there was nothing consensual about it. The language was a bit too literary for me at times, as if the author was trying too hard, and after the first 20 pages or so I was tempted to put it down. Still, I'm glad I weathered it out. I wish more had been divulged about her life after she freed herself from her father's grasp, because comment is made of her having a husband and kids, and the broken woman at the end of the book wasn't in any position to get that far in her personal life. So I would've liked some closure about how she managed to put the episode with her father behind her, how she met her husband, what happened when she told him about her father, etc.
August 5, 2011
This book disgusted me, and I apologize for being so harsh. I know it's a memoir, and I should be empathizing with the author, but it's a hard sell to see her as the victim of abuse when she was of an age that she should have known better. She perpetuated the relationship. Furthermore, I find the tone of her memoir to be whiny, as if she knows she must somehow work to convince the reader she's a victim. I muddled through this book, but still think it's one of the worst reading experiences ever. Absolutely hated this book.
July 14, 2014
This is one of those books that doesn't make you feel better for having read it.
December 25, 2014
Beautiful Memoir Uncomfortable subject matter. Interesting use of tense throughout. Deftly written, tight prose. Beautiful and clear.
January 5, 2017
Horrifying subject matter, and I'm still unsure how I feel about this, but absolutely fascinating. I finished this memoir in one sitting.
October 5, 2014
This book is beyond amazing. Not only does the author courageously write a very bold first-hand account of a very hushed topic (incest), but she writes with clarity and insight, in a poetic and mesmerizing style, and she writes without shame.
I recommend this book to memoir-lovers, anyone who likes good literature, and, obviously, victims of abuse.
Kathryn Harrison writes in present tense, just as Eva Hoffman does in Lost in Translation (another great book), which, at first, is difficult to adjust to, but then I think it helps evoke empathy from the reader; it’s happening right now, not ten or twenty years ago. Not sure if Harrison’s other books are in present tense, but it works well for this one.
Plot:
Style:
These are the first three sentences of the book: “We meet at airports. We meet in cities where we’ve never been before. We meet where no one will recognize us” (p. 3). I liked her style immediately. We. We. We. It is a book about a love triangle. Also, it echoes. She continues in the next paragraph: “Increasingly, the places we go are unreal places: the Petrified Forest, Monument Valley, the Grand Canyon—places as stark and beautiful and deadly as those revealed in satellite photographs of distant planets. Airless, burning, inhuman” (p. 3). Her style is poetic, with use of symbolism, as she’s making a statement right away that her incestuous relationship with her father is just as she describes these landscapes.
I find Harrison’s style of writing like something of a poetic sketch artist, with no meticulous detail in individual scenes, and this works because she’s encompassing such a length of time. She had to decide what was relevant throughout a mainly twenty-four-year period. The reader doesn’t get lost in detail. Only what you need to know is included, but it’s done so in a very natural and beautiful way.
Kathryn Harrison has a deep and accurate understanding of psychology:
• On page 7 she describes her mother ignoring her, and everything in her life she doesn’t want to deal with, by putting on a sleep mask: “sleep is where she hides.” This is insightful. She also comments on the psychology of a young child abandoned in this way: “for as long as my mother refuses consciousness, she refuses consciousness of me: I do not exist” (p. 8).
• On her birthday gifts from her mother: “Her gifts are valuable in that they always provide clues as to how I might ingratiate myself. If she gives me a dress in a size six, then I know to alter my size ten to fit it. I can make myself the creature she imagines she might love” (p. 38). The words “she imagines” are insightful, pointing out that her mother never loves the real thing of anything, only the idea of it. She’s a narcissist.
• This is when she’s twenty and meets her father that third time: “I watch and listen as my parents begin to argue. They can’t reconstruct a year, a season, or ever a week from the past without disagreeing. Whatever they talk about—their wedding day, my birth—it’s as if my mother and father experiences two separate, unconnected realities, a disjuncture that allows no compromise, no middle ground” (p. 54).
Harrison writes bravely and clearly on a topic—incest—that is taboo and carries with it immense shame for its victims. She does this by not going into graphic detail, which would have alienated and appalled her readers, and sexually intrigued pathological readers, but by non-defensively detailing who she was at the time this occurred and what her internal motivations were. This isn’t a story of a six-year-old or a twelve-year-old daughter being molested by her father, but instead a twenty-year-old woman who agreed to an affair with her father, one that lasted four years. I think it would have been easy for Harrison to write in a defensive posture, assuming that her readers who think she was just as sick as her father, that the guilt was 50% hers. Instead, she writes passages such as this: “In the years to come, I’ll think of the kiss as a kind of transforming sting, like that of a scorpion: a narcotic that spreads from my mouth to my brain. The kiss is the point at which I begin, slowly, inexorably, to fall asleep, to surrender volition, to become paralyzed. It’s the drug my father administers in order that he might consume me. That I might desire to be consumed,” (p. 70). Harrison’s approach is to weave her reasoning through the story, painting the portrait of a young woman who is motivated, as any daughter would be, to know her father, and who needs to understand this parent in order to understand herself and her family dynamics, and who is coerced into having a sexual relationship with him for these ends, and who suffers severe psychological trauma from the first time he kisses her to many years after their affair ends. “Please don’t make this the price, I beg silently,” Harrison writes of her twenty-year-old self (p. 107).
I recommend this book to memoir-lovers, anyone who likes good literature, and, obviously, victims of abuse.
Kathryn Harrison writes in present tense, just as Eva Hoffman does in Lost in Translation (another great book), which, at first, is difficult to adjust to, but then I think it helps evoke empathy from the reader; it’s happening right now, not ten or twenty years ago. Not sure if Harrison’s other books are in present tense, but it works well for this one.
Plot:
Style:
These are the first three sentences of the book: “We meet at airports. We meet in cities where we’ve never been before. We meet where no one will recognize us” (p. 3). I liked her style immediately. We. We. We. It is a book about a love triangle. Also, it echoes. She continues in the next paragraph: “Increasingly, the places we go are unreal places: the Petrified Forest, Monument Valley, the Grand Canyon—places as stark and beautiful and deadly as those revealed in satellite photographs of distant planets. Airless, burning, inhuman” (p. 3). Her style is poetic, with use of symbolism, as she’s making a statement right away that her incestuous relationship with her father is just as she describes these landscapes.
I find Harrison’s style of writing like something of a poetic sketch artist, with no meticulous detail in individual scenes, and this works because she’s encompassing such a length of time. She had to decide what was relevant throughout a mainly twenty-four-year period. The reader doesn’t get lost in detail. Only what you need to know is included, but it’s done so in a very natural and beautiful way.
Kathryn Harrison has a deep and accurate understanding of psychology:
• On page 7 she describes her mother ignoring her, and everything in her life she doesn’t want to deal with, by putting on a sleep mask: “sleep is where she hides.” This is insightful. She also comments on the psychology of a young child abandoned in this way: “for as long as my mother refuses consciousness, she refuses consciousness of me: I do not exist” (p. 8).
• On her birthday gifts from her mother: “Her gifts are valuable in that they always provide clues as to how I might ingratiate myself. If she gives me a dress in a size six, then I know to alter my size ten to fit it. I can make myself the creature she imagines she might love” (p. 38). The words “she imagines” are insightful, pointing out that her mother never loves the real thing of anything, only the idea of it. She’s a narcissist.
• This is when she’s twenty and meets her father that third time: “I watch and listen as my parents begin to argue. They can’t reconstruct a year, a season, or ever a week from the past without disagreeing. Whatever they talk about—their wedding day, my birth—it’s as if my mother and father experiences two separate, unconnected realities, a disjuncture that allows no compromise, no middle ground” (p. 54).
Harrison writes bravely and clearly on a topic—incest—that is taboo and carries with it immense shame for its victims. She does this by not going into graphic detail, which would have alienated and appalled her readers, and sexually intrigued pathological readers, but by non-defensively detailing who she was at the time this occurred and what her internal motivations were. This isn’t a story of a six-year-old or a twelve-year-old daughter being molested by her father, but instead a twenty-year-old woman who agreed to an affair with her father, one that lasted four years. I think it would have been easy for Harrison to write in a defensive posture, assuming that her readers who think she was just as sick as her father, that the guilt was 50% hers. Instead, she writes passages such as this: “In the years to come, I’ll think of the kiss as a kind of transforming sting, like that of a scorpion: a narcotic that spreads from my mouth to my brain. The kiss is the point at which I begin, slowly, inexorably, to fall asleep, to surrender volition, to become paralyzed. It’s the drug my father administers in order that he might consume me. That I might desire to be consumed,” (p. 70). Harrison’s approach is to weave her reasoning through the story, painting the portrait of a young woman who is motivated, as any daughter would be, to know her father, and who needs to understand this parent in order to understand herself and her family dynamics, and who is coerced into having a sexual relationship with him for these ends, and who suffers severe psychological trauma from the first time he kisses her to many years after their affair ends. “Please don’t make this the price, I beg silently,” Harrison writes of her twenty-year-old self (p. 107).
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