Customer Reviews

The Kiss

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Kathryn Harrison's "The Kiss," is a powerful, beautifully written autobiographical work about her four year incestuous relationship with her sexually and emotionally exploitive father, her years with her dysfunctional family, especially her narcissistic mother, and ultimately, her story of survival. This is not a "tell-all," written to titillate voyeuristic readers. There is nothing graphically sexual written in this memoir of the author's childhood and early adult life. Pain, however, is found here in abundance, as well as courage.

When Ms. Harrison sought professional help because she feared for her life, (a potential suicide), and her sanity, she worked very hard to revisit her past, to learn about and understand the horrors she experienced, and to explore her family's dynamics, particularly those between her mother, father and herself. Although the subject of incest is a major taboo, the act - the crime - is much more prevalent in our society than one would imagine. Because there is so much shame attached to incestuous relationships, victims rarely divulge their dark secrets, and so documentation and accurate statistics are difficult to come by.

Kathryn's parents met when they were seventeen. They fell in love, and when the teenage girl became pregnant with Kathryn, the young couple married and lived with the disapproving maternal grandparents. Before the infant turned one year-old, her grandfather pressured her father, just a boy really, to leave and get a divorce so his wife could begin her life anew. Kathryn saw her father twice over the next twenty years. Her mother, who provided her child with almost no emotional stability, moved into her own apartment when Kathryn turned six, leaving her behind and no phone number or mailing address where she could be contacted. She did visit, however, and spent time with her daughter. Both grandparents raised the little girl, who was bright, gifted, and creative. She turned into a beautiful, but extremely troubled young woman, longing to be loved.

When Harrison entered college, her father, now an ordained minister, reestablished contact with her. He had remarried and had another family. Oddly enough, Kathryn's mother, who appeared to be still in love with her ex-husband, arranged for him to spend a week with their 20 year-old daughter and herself, and invited them both to stay at her small apartment. She vied with her daughter for the man's attention throughout his visit. When he left, Kathryn drove him to the airport. Ms Harrison writes: "A voice over the public-address system announces the final boarding call. As I pull away, feeling the resistance of his hand behind my head, how tightly he holds me to him, the kiss changes. It is no longer a chaste, closed-lipped kiss. My father pushes his tongue deep into my mouth: wet, insistent, exploring, then withdrawn. He picks up his camera case, and, smiling brightly, he joins the end of the line of passengers disappearing into the airplane." She wonders if the weird, unsettled feelings she has are appropriate...if other fathers kiss their daughters like this. "In years to come," she writes, "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." This is the kiss of the book's title - a turning point in the author's life and in her relationship with her dad.

For twenty years, throughout her childhood and adolescence, Kathryn yearned to have a father, like other children. It is painful to imagine the ambivalence she felt after "the kiss," and the guilt she felt for that very ambivalence after their physical relationship began. This is a man, a minister of God, who tells his very vulnerable daughter, that he "was frightened when he felt that he loved me more than God, but the heresy was resolved when God announced to my father that He was revealing Himself to my father through me."

The most shocking aspects of Ms. Harrison's narrative do not deal directly with the incest, her father's criminal behavior, her mother's extreme narcissism, or either set of grandparents. What truly astonishes is the realization that this woman survived to become a relatively healthy adult, an extraordinarily gifted writer, and a loving mother and wife. There is much here that is hopeful and inspiring. I purposefully put off reading "The Kiss" until I had read some of the author's fiction. I wanted to keep the memoir in perspective and not allow it to color my opinion about her other work. I have read three of her novels so far and have become quite a fan.

There has been way too much publicity surrounding "The Kiss," for all the wrong reasons, as far as I am concerned. Ms. Harrison has been accused of sensationalism, of writing about such a culturally taboo topic to make money, for not writing more from a victim's point of view - not portraying herself as sufficiently devastated, etc.. In an interview, the author said that one of the reasons she wrote this story, is because her first novel, where the heroine has an affair with her father, is deemed autobiographical by critics. The female character was/is totally unlike Harrison, and she felt as if she had "betrayed her own history." She wanted to set the record straight.

This searing account of an obsessive, forbidden love affair, in all its complexity, is brilliantly documented. There is a noticeable lack of affect in Ms. Harrison's sparse prose, demonstrating how detached she was from her feelings of rage, sadness and pain. She also discusses here her bouts with anorexia and bulimia, her attempts to reclaim her life and her quest for a personal identity. Not easy to read - but well worth the effort.
JANA

This 1997 memoir by Kathryn Harrison is the true story of her incestuous relationship with her father. Her parents were divorced and there had been little contact throughout her childhood, but she had always been obsessed with him. Then, after visiting her in college when she was 20, his kiss good-bye was passionate rather than fatherly. That was the beginning.

Ms. Harrison's writes in the present tense, with brief flashbacks and flash forwards, her language seemingly simple and yet poetic. Always, it is startling with a deep underlay of sorrow. The reader shares her turmoil, her guilt, her attraction to her father as well as her repulsion. She's a victim, although a willing one, anorexic, bulimic and sad.

I've read two of her other books, "Poison" and "The Binding Chair". I loved both of them. And now that I've read this memoir, I've come to know her more and understand the deep well of discomfort which is present in her writing. Now a wife and mother, and a writer of some renown, I admire the courage it took for her to write this book and come to terms with the demons of her past. A mere 207 pages of large print, this book can be easily read in one sitting. Like her other books, it's not a pleasant read but yet very worthwhile. I definitely recommend it.

This is the story that Harrison had been longing to tell. There are traces of the same story in her first novel "Thicker than Water." There are traces of the same story in her second novel "Exposure". And then she wrote "The Kiss", which is an unadorned, unapologetic first-hand account of a very disturbing, violating relationship with her own father.

The telling of Harrison's story is amazingly well done. No self-pity, no over-analysis. Just the plain and simple albeit disturbing facts. This short book, though at times hard to read, is even harder to put down, and impossible to forget.

Writing this memoir took guts of steel. And no, she's not "cashing in on the incest trend" like some of her critics accuse. Those who are uncomfortable hearing about incest need to realize that keeping victims silent helps allow it to happen.

However, this book is not motivated by money or awareness causes. It appears motivated by the author's own need to free herself from the paralyzing memories of the horrible situation she was thrust into, to explain it to herself as much as to the reader. To "get it off her chest" so she could move on.

Harrison fans like myself will also notice that she *has* moved on. Her novels since this memoir ("Poison" and "The Binding Chair") show that Harrison's mind is now free to imagine other stories worth telling, which are painstakingly researched and beautifully written.

I highly recommend this book. It is this gifted author's best work, and it is one you will never forget.

This is an elegantly written memoir, searingly painful, yet, at the same time, strangely compelling, about a young woman who grew up in a dysfunctional household, raised primarily by her grandparents. Her undemonstrative mother, who lived apart from her daughter during her formative years, was emotionally distant, and her father, from whom her mother was divorced, was physically absent.

When she was reunited with her father at the age of twenty, her hunger for love and affection was such that an unfatherly kiss led to a consensual and obsessive sexual affair with her biological father, an ordained minister. It was an obsession in which her own mother was seemingly complicit, treating her daughter as if she were a rival for the affection of the man that they both loved. The author's unseemly obsession with her father would torment and haunt her for years.

This is a beautifully told story about a parental betrayal so incomprehensible that it will leave the reader aghast. The author infuses the book with a sadness that is heartbreakingly palpable. Her evocative and lyrical prose, spare and intense, elevates this otherwise sordid and tawdry tale, making it a haunting memoir of a past that is best forgotten.

Memoirs are supposed to be reserved for great people who do great things. In order to be worthy of a memoir, the logic goes, one should have accomplished something of public note. But what about private accomplishment that takes place behind the dark walls of family life? That's not memoir, it's "confessional" and it's what sick people (usually women) do to get some pathetic scrap of attention.

Or so the conventional wisdom goes. And I have never seen an author as villified as Kathryn Harrison has been for defying that idea. She's been accused of telling her story for a sick sort of fame; nevermind that she was already a fairly successful author with a seemingly idyllic life, and that it's pretty implausible to imagine a woman of her intelligence failing to understand how this book change that life forever. She has both been accused of eroticizing her experience, and not being explicit enough. She's been lumped in the same category as morons who appear on trash talk shows. Because she never obeys the rules of the confessional genre by saying "I sinned," or "I was victimized," she is regarded as a whore who entered into a relationship with her fantastically cruel father consensually. Because she doesn't beg her audience for forgiveness, she receives none. She's been called, bizarrely, "passive-aggressive" and "nuerotic" by armchair psychologists who'd rather diagnose juicy pathologies than trouble to themselves to read her text.

From where I stand, the publication of this book is an act of consummate courage. Every sentence is hammered onto the page so slowly and carefully it seems like she wrote perhaps a few a day, like haiku, yet the cummulative effect isn't ponderous at all -- the whole flows and flows relentlessly, terribly -- I read it compulsively in a night and cannot remember when a book affected me so physically, made my heart hammer, covered my hands with sweat.

After the truly harrowing experience of reading this book, I am o! utraged at the idiocy of the bulk of Harrison's professional reviewers: anyone who finds anything remotely titillating or "pornographic" in this book should worry about their own mental health before anyone else's. What they have failed to recognize is that this book is a gift. Harrison has lived through an experience that should have destroyed her, and has done something heroic. Instead of confessing and offering her readers a penance, she tells her story lyrically, in the classically tragic manner: even though it is the most deeply personal story, it reads like a terrible myth. Nearly done in by her jealous mother and mysterious father, she finds her way out of Hell, beginning with a line older than once-upon-a-time: I alone survived to tell thee. For her bravery, for the restraint and clarity with which she relates her tale, for her generosity in sharing it with a wide audience, she deserves so much better than the shabby treatment she has received.

As the reviews have said, you are probably rolling your eyes with this one, or else you are simply laughing with amazement. "Somebody finally did it! They slept with their father! Now we can hear all the gory details!" Yet surprisingly, with THE KISS, this is not the case. In fact, there are no gory details, just the plain and simply-told story of a vulnerable young woman who became an instrument in the undying love affair of her parents.

Kathryn Harrison's parents divorced before she was a year old. She lived with her young mother at her grandparents' house and then simply with her grandparents. She never had contact with her father. Yet there always seemed to be a shadow of his presence lingering around every corner. On the few occasions when her father, a Mormon preacher, did come to visit, her mother could not focus on anyone or anything else. After years of teenage difficulties, anorexia, bulimia, and feeling caught in the middle of her mother's silent struggle against her own parents, Kathryn Harrison finally gets a chance to reclaim her relationship with her father when she comes home from college at age twenty. All seems to be going well until at the last moment of their parting, Harrison's father gives her a kiss, a slow, passionate, open-mouthed kiss. Thus begins the seduction of Harrison by her father.

"God gave you to me" is all he said. And even as Kathryn isolates herself from friends, thwarts her anguished mother, and quits college, her father simply responds with frustration, 'Don't you know what you're doing to me?' or 'Those rules are for other people, we are exceptions.' And the love affair continues for the next four years, with Harrison living with her father's new family at one point. It is only when Kathryn Harrison's mother succumbs to breast cancer that she is able to finally reconcile with her dying mother and break off this damaging relationship with her father.

Overall, this book was well-written. As I said, one can appreciate the fact that Kathryn Harrison doesn't get into graphic details and writes with integrity and grace. She talks more about her feelings and the psychology of an addictive relatioship rather than the physical aspect. At the same time, however, this book unfortunately did not capture enough of my attention. It seemed to focus on a lot of minuscule details such as where the affair took place and at what time, when it could have been delving further into the relationships. At times, Kathryn Harrison's prose seemed to be over-wrought for the given situation. I must say, however, that the ending is very moving and poignant. It is also inspiring to know that in spite of this bizarre tragedy, Harrison has gotten on with her life as her literary legacy and happy family are testimony to.

I have read, and liked, Kathryn Harrison's beautiful books, Thicker Than Water and Poison, so when The Kiss was published, I was more than a little dismayed. Why, I asked myself, would a beautiful and talented writer like Harrison want to "cash in" with an exploitative piece of tripe like this? I really wasn't sure I even believed the events Harrison was writing about had even happened, but for now, I would give her the benefit of the doubt.

Then a friend, knowing I was a fan of Harrison's, gave me a copy of The Kiss. It was too perverse to read, I thought, and I threw it in a closet. But, eventually, morbid curiosity got the best of me and I read the book. I was both shocked and pleased. Shocked at what the book portrayed, and pleased to find that Harrison wasn't "cashing in" on anything. The Kiss is a wonderful book, and, it is wonderfully written. It is spare, revealing, raw, dignified and one of the most harrowing evocations of loneliness I have ever encountered.

Harrison was an only child whose father deserted his little family when Kathryn was only six months old. Her mother, who was severely depressed, spent her days in bed, a black satin mask shielding her from the outside world. Kathryn, as a tiny girl, would spend days at her sleeping mother's bedside, dropping shoes, slamming hairbrushes, peering inside the sleep mask, willing this unwilling mother to please wake up and love her. The mother didn't.

At the age of six, Kathryn was sent to live with her Grandmother while her mother moved to a nearby apartment. Missing her mother, Kathryn would go to look at the dresses her mother had left behind. One day, folding herself into a beautiful sun-gold dress, this little girl summoned the courage to ask herself, "If a dress like this was not worth taking, how could I have hoped to be?"

Far from being bitter over her husband's abandonment, Kathryn's mother remained romantically fixated on Kathryn's father. He visited when Kathryn was only five and she can remember her mother's intense interest in him and the way he would "arrange" them for his own family photographs.

As a teenager, Kathryn became severely anorexic. She tells us it was a sign of rebellion against her mother's blatant sexuality. Her breasts disappeared, then her hips, then her periods. When her mother took her to a gynecologist to be fitted for a diaphragm, prior to going off to college, Kathryn endured one the most bizarre situations I have ever encountered, in "life" or in fiction. Suffice it to say, if you read this book, it will certainly shock you.

When Kathryn was twenty, her father again visited. Although he was remarried and had children with his new wife, Kathryn was well aware that her own mother had been carrying on secret sexual encounters with this man. "She uses his curiosity about me, and mine about him," Harrison writes, "as the excuse to plan a reunion that will include her. If this is the case, how bitterly she will regret the ruse."

Kathryn's father did visit and while he was there, he slept with Kathryn's mother. It was Kathryn, however, who drove him to the airport to catch his flight home. And it was there that her father first kissed her goodbye. But this was no ordinary kiss, at least not ordinary for a father and a daughter. "He touches his lips to mine," Harrison says. "I stiffen. My father pushed his tongue into my mouth: wet, insistent, exploring, then withdrawn."

Yes, she was old enough to know better, and, in fact, she did know better. But life and the circumstances under which she had grown up, the needs that had still gone unmet--all of these and more converged at the moment of that kiss to propel Kathryn Harrison over the edge of reason and place her in her father's power.

Never light-hearted and carefree, Kathryn quit college and fell into a deep depression, one she describes as a "cold, sinking torpor." She lived alone in a basement apartment, talking to her father on the telephone for hours each night as her persuaded her, isolated her and finally seduced her. He was, after all, all she had. Even the love letters he sent her, she later discovered, were replicas of ones he had sent her mother twenty years earlier.

They slept together, father and daughter. "God gave you to me," was her father's explanation, as if this made things alright, as if this was all the explanation that was needed. Kathryn, depressed and impressionable couldn't see her father for what he really was--a selfish, self-centered narcissist who would use anyone and anything to further his own needs and wants.

Readers who are looking for all the gory details won't find them in this book, for Kathryn remembers very little about having sex with her father save for the fact that it definitely was not good and it definitely made her feel more alone than she had ever felt before.

To her credit, Kathryn's mother, suspecting the truth of what was happening, put aside her own vanity long enough to take Kathryn to a psychiatrist. There, the young Kathryn put on the performance of a lifetime and robbed her mother, not only of her father, but of the only human being in whom her mother could confide.

The worst, though, was yet to come, and it would be a long time before Harrison could free herself and write The Kiss.

The Kiss is not the first book to chronicle adult incest nor is it the most famous to do so. Anaïs Nin reportedly slept with her own father, but Nin was a notoriously unreliable writer, albeit a very good one. It doesn't help, either, that we really have no signposts in the world of incest literature. Many of us find dinner with our mother and father an excruciating experience; almost no grown man or woman wants to sleep with a parent.

Wisely, Harrison offers no excuses for her behavior as she knews there are none. She knows it was wrong and she knows it was ludicrous. But human behavior is usually inexplicable, the good, the bad, the mundane and yes, the ludicrous. Harrison has let the facts stand or fall as they may; her usual lyric prose is pared-down and she resists any temptation to go over the top. The result is that The Kiss is a harrowing account of loneliness and deprivation, the worst nightmare any child could ever imagine.

One of the keys to Harrison's own healing is to be found in the book's dedication to "Beloved 1942-1985." "Beloved" is Kathryn's mother, now deceased. After years of roiling over her mother's faults and the wrong that was done to her, Kathryn Harrison finally found peace and reconciliation. She became "beloved" to her mother and her mother became "beloved" to her.

This is a painful and painfully honest book, harrowing, sad and lonely. But, ultimately, it is the chronicle of one woman's courageous triumph, a triumph that can be appreciated by any other woman, abuse survivor or not. For is there any daughter among us who cannot say, with all honesty, "If things had only been a little different, it could have been me?"

This book was written in this weird dispassionate way. Maybe it was stylistically supposed to convey the dissociative nature of the experience? If so, I guess it was effective...but at the expense of conveying any introspection as to why she engaged in the affair. The net effect is that the experience remains inexplicable/inaccessible to the reader, in effect continuing the narrow world the two of them created - which she describes but does not let us into.

I'm left wondering if she really did any recovery work around it, or just boxed up that little world and it lives in her still. I wanted to understand this fascinating aspect of human experience, and I wanted to explore the mental and spiritual integration she would have to go through to make sense of it--but I didn't get it. It was mostly a bare, cold accounting of the events of the affair. It doesn't seem like the author grew from the experience or transcended it. On the whole I felt disappointed and perplexed as to the point of writing it. It was fascinating just because the subject is so taboo, but ultimately it left me unsatisfied.

Devastating. What better word to describe such a story as the one Kathryn Harrison relates, the story of a father who exploits his daughter's natural longing for him in order to satisfy his very unnatural appetite for utter dominion over her--her body, her mind, and most damagingly, her soul. Harrison's prose is raw and sparse and brutally effective. Her words cut into your heart with surgical precision and allow you to bleed along with her, to feel the numbing aftermath of pain redoubled upon pain, of dried out tears in cold, empty motel rooms. But just as the journey that Harrison takes us through is difficult and heartbreaking, so the ultimate rewards of her self-realization and freedom are like ice water for a baked and cracking soul. Surely, it is a journey well worth the tears fallen.

This book is a must read even if the thought of incest turns your stomach. Harrison never goes into detail with the sex and her style of writing is beautiful. The way she describes her relationship with her father makes the reader almost understand how she becomes so controlled by him and their relationship is never based on sex. I started this book late last night and couldn't put it down. I am very picky about memoirs, but this is pure gold.