The Kiss

by Kathryn Harrison

Hardcover, 1997

Status

Available

Publication

New York : Random House, 1997.

Description

In this acclaimed and groundbreaking memoir, Kathryn Harrison transforms into a work of art the darkest passage imaginable in a young woman's life: an obsessive love affair between father and daughter that begins when she, at age twenty, is reunited with the father whose absence had haunted her youth. Exquisitely and hypnotically written, like a bold and terrifying dream, The Kiss is breathtaking in its honesty and in the power and beauty of its creation. A story both of transgression and of family complicity in breaking taboo, The Kiss is also about love--about the most primal of love triangles, the one that ensnares a child between mother and father.

Media reviews

The past is a dangerous place. One look backward can turn you into salt, or cause the loss of the woman you love. For a writer, memory is treacherous and precious at the same time. Every now and then, though, a writer looks back with such bold clarity that it's as if we were living right along with
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the story. The work reverberates with similarities to our own experience, and with differences from our own experience, so that in the end it gives us a new way of looking at the world. Kathryn Harrison's memoir, ''The Kiss,'' is a book like this.
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User reviews

LibraryThing member RavenousReaders
A beautifully written memoir about a very dark subject. In her 20s Harrison embarked on an affair with an older man who happens to be (she is aware of this fact) her father, long absent from her childhood. What could be tawdry is instead a very brave and moving memoir. Tobias Wolff says it all on
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the back jacket: the author “brings so much light to bear on such a dark matter, redeeming it with the steadiness of her gaze and the uncanny, heartbreaking exactitude of her language.”

Reviewed by: John
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LibraryThing member icolford
The story that Kathryn Harrison tells in her memoir "The Kiss" is narrated in such clean, tight prose, and with such devastating detachment, that the reader could almost be excused for missing the horror at its core. Harrison was the victim of what could be termed a "perfect storm" of parental
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dysfunction. The only daughter of parents who conceived too early and separated while still young, she was raised mostly by her maternal grandmother. Craving the affection of an emotionally withholding mother who drifted in and out of her life, she is ripe for the picking when her father re-appears when she is twenty. Emotionally fragile and naive, Harrison is unable to resist her father's forceful and uninhibited devotion, and the two embark on a lurid affair. In a short time her entire existence revolves around her father, and the sole thought in her head is to be with him. This continues even after she realizes he is a selfish manipulator and she is the victim of an unnatural sexual obsession. The affair concludes unceremoniously after a few years, and more than a decade later she produced this account, sparing herself nothing, dissecting her every action, motive and emotional state. A truly chilling book and something of a milestone in the art of the memoir.
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LibraryThing member Micalhut
Unbelievably powerful writing, plummeting you into the soul-numbing experience this author went through as the daughter of narcissists and the price she paid as her brilliant father's narcissistic supply during a four-year affair with him in her early 20's. While we're screaming "walk away" after
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the first kiss, the power of the story lies in, not only her masterful phrasing and what she numbly reveals in brevity, but in the fact that when a soul is so wounded and under a dark spell, the body follows its own path toward destruction even as the intellect instructs you to desist. I read it wanting to know how a writer could possibly craft this story, wondering what words and memories she'd pick to share such a dark soul path. I learned. Harrison is a master. Warning, it's a two hour read, but might stay with you forever.
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LibraryThing member carmarie
Fascinating and unimaginable memoir, written in an amazing prose. Her sentences flow with grace. Her father was a nightmare, even though most of the time she didn't realize it because she was so entraced by him emotionally.
LibraryThing member julierh
this moving account of the author's emotionally (and physically) unavailable mother and obnoxious, narcissistic father is charged with profound psychological wisdom; sad but rich with insight
LibraryThing member BinnieBee
AFter finishing "While they Slept" I read up on Kathryn Harrison and immediately reserved all the books I could find by her. Now i have about nine to read! After reading her memoir, "The Kiss" I am now reading her first "fictional" novel, "Thicker than Water" which is really more of an expansion of
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her memoir in a fictional format, sold as a fictional novel.
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LibraryThing member ivirago
I think this was a pretty interesting book. Definitely not your usual misery memoir type of book - it was very artfully written to the point that you were almost distracted from what she was saying by how she was saying it. Not a pleasant subject matter, but the story was told very discreetly and
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honestly - no sensationalism or ranting here.
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LibraryThing member goldiebear
This memoir was fascinating. It was very artfully written and I couldn't put it down. I have to say I found it very sad and painful at times. What a life Harrison lead in her twenties. It's hard to imagine. She tells is quite beautifully. It's amazing that she was able to pull herself through it
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all and come out okay on the other end. For anyone who didn’t know their father growing up and seeking that connection later, I can only imagine how it would feel.
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LibraryThing member schatzi
Kathryn Harrison has a beautiful way with words, evocative without being flowery, rich with symbolism without being over the top. The subject matter is, of course, disturbing, but I found myself unable to put this book down. Although I doubt many readers will be able to relate to the relationship
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she ultimately had with her father, I know that I personally could relate to the author's desire to belong and be loved.
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LibraryThing member julierh
this moving account of the author's emotionally (and physically) unavailable mother and obnoxious, narcissistic father is charged with profound psychological wisdom; sad but rich with insight and very good
LibraryThing member DianaLynn5287
Though this book was well written, it took a while for me to get involved in the story. Horrifying to read, but a pretty interesting memoir. 6/10
LibraryThing member engpunk77
A good read about a subject rarely discussed. The author courageously reveals her incestual relationship with her father (as an adult). An eye-opener! She invites you to explore the complexities of such a relationship after you've made your official judgements about people in these
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situations.
Recommended.
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LibraryThing member AddictedToMorphemes
The Kiss by Kathryn Harrison
Memoir

Incredibly brave and poignant recounting of the author's dysfunctional relationship with her entire family. The focal point of her life had always been her mother and father, who had married young after becoming pregnant. She always felt invisible to her mother and
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wanted only to be seen and loved by her. Her mother was incapable. She had her own internal demons which left Kathryn abandoned, neglected, forgotten.

Her father, who was forced out by his wife's parents, left the family when she was six months old. She saw him only a few times as a child, and even though he had remarried, he and her mother still had an obsession with each other which Kathryn witnessed with curiosity on the few occasions they were all together.

After a 10-year absence, Kathryn and her father were reunited. She was then 20 years old, a college student. They both seemed to be mesmerized by each other--Kathryn feeling like she was getting to know herself when she saw similarities between herself and her father, same walk, same face, same gestures. Her father, by then a successful minister, seemed to have fallen into an obsessive trance when he was near her. He couldn't stop touching her, staring at her, crying over the years lost. Even though it seemed over the top, Kathryn ate up all the attention she received from him. She finally was being seen by someone who declared he loved her.

I don't know it yet, not consciously, but I feel it; my father, holding himself so still and staring at me, has somehow begun to "see" me into being. His look gives me to myself, his gaze reflects the life my mother's willfully shut eyes denied.

From a mother who won't see me to a father who tells me I am there only when he does see me: perhaps, unconsciously, I consider this an existential promotion. I must, for already I feel that my life depends on my father's seeing me.

Slowly and cunningly, her father forces her to give everything to him, all or nothing. He is determined to own her, to possess her. In his mind, he feels that God gave her to him. She becomes distraught and unable to function in daily life; she even leaves college for a while. All her attention is focused on him and she is unable to explain to anyone what is happening inside her. ...I know it is wrong, and its wrongness is what lets me know, too, that it is a secret.

Her story is really heartbreaking and maddening. It seems at every turn, she encountered yet another person who was incapable or unwilling to give her a safe place to grow. Abandoned by both parents, grandparents withheld physical affection. Several people saw the unnatural relationship between her and her father developing but did nothing but cluck their tongues. To be fair, at one point her mother did suspect that something was going on and brought Kathryn to her therapist. In the telling, however, it almost seemed like the mother was doing it not out of concern for her daughter, but possibly out of jealousy or the need to prove her level of importance in the "contest" for the father's love.

In any event, there was evidence of a cycle of abuse through generations (her father's father made a pass at her as well) and no one seemed to be doing anything to stop it, including the author herself. There was no epilogue informing/reassuring her readers that her younger sisters or even young women in her father's congregation were kept from his possible manipulation. All that being said, her honesty is commendable, she's a talented writer, and her ability to put words together in such a beautiful way is a rare gift.
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Language

Barcode

10983
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