The Kiss: A Memoir

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 wond

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.

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.

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.