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 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

It's difficult to sympathize with a twenty-year-old woman who willingly engages in an affair with her father. I recognize the factors that lead Harrison into the incest. But I cannot connect with her as a narrator. Harrison never states that her father roped her up and forced her into having sex with him. She's not powerless. Thus her character cannot exact sympathy from me as a reader. If I read about someone who had a terrible childhood, I want to read about him or her overcoming it, not becoming victims even further; certainly not lamenting about being victimized and never taking any accountability. As Sven Birkerts once proclaimed, "Storytelling fails when the narrative cannot coax sympathetic resonance from the listener." There is nothing sympathetic about Harrison's incestual relationship with her father. If she were twelve, then it would have resonated more powerfully.Certainly, I can't say that I found any of the memoir's characters sympathetic. The mother is too self-absorbed to own up to motherhood. The father is a perverted priest, just as self-absorbed in his lust for his daughter. The characters that try to help the damaged Harrison end up being pushed away. What is left if this narrative has no tolerable characters? Only shock value. I could reference the murderer Pee Wee Gatskins' "Autobiography of a Serial Killer" for an example. He was in no way likable. But he doesn't tease; he lets the reader get close in details and I felt continually disturbed. But with Harrison, there wasn't enough "shock" to keep me interested when I dislike her. While I don't desire to read smut scenes by Harrison of the incest, to say that she remembers nothing about having sex with her father can't be true. There were thoughts running through her head during the act. I continually felt this way during her memoir, as though she was holding me at arm's reach and refusing to allow me to emotionally connect with her via a deeper look into her mind. I failed to find the book an easy or quick read because of this; rather, it was a chore, and if it wasn't required reading for a course back in college, I would have put it down halfway through.Furthermore, I found Harrison's method of jumping through time frustrating. Just on pages 192-93, we go from being at the bedside of her dying mother, to her father's car at a truck stop (at which point in the timeline this is, I'm still uncertain), and then to the memories of Harrison as a young child. Perhaps just jumping non-linearly through the memoir is a way of giving the reader a similar feeling of confusion to that of Harrison at the time, but it became tiring. That being said, Harrison does use words well, and the writing has an otherwise nice, fitting style.Obviously, this is an acclaimed book with a place in the history of literature and memoir. But I came to dislike Harrison too intensely to get any enjoyment from this read.

i identified so much with the story told by Kathryn Harrison. Because of her early childhood treatment by her mother, she was primed to seek attention in a special way. When the man who was her biological father, although not the man who raised her, came back into her life when she was 20, she felt a special need to connect with him. Her "father" had many of the traits of a pedifile and soon sought a grandiose, fantasy relationship with her. Kathryn was able to be vctimized by this person because she was so needy, but also because she wanted to take something away from her mother who deprived her of her basic need for love and acceptance. The man had the same kind of power over her as an abusive husband often does. He isolates, demands control, punishes but at the same time puts the loved one on a pedestal with fantasy ideation and perfection of love. She was under the spell of this man for 4 years until she began to heal her emotional scars and mature. Kathryn, the author of the book needed to understand what was happening to her by writing about the relationship in this book and in fictional accounts which helped her to work thru what was going on in her life. Something like this doesnt happen except where there are some degrees of emotional illness in both the victim and the victimizer. The book was reviting, beautifully told, and amazing. It was not salacious or trashy or detailed. The story was poignant, sad, and unforgettable. I look forward to reading more books by the author and recommend this book to mature readers who have compassion on a young needy woman.

これはノンフィクションである。にもかかわらず「文学として」なっていないとか、ひどいのは「娯楽性に欠けている」という意見を遠回しに言うレビュアーもいる。これは誰かが期待するようなポルノ作品ではない。もしアダルトビデオみたいな場面やスポーツ新聞の扇情小説のようなものを期待するならいますぐこのページを去るべきだ。そして、同様の近親相姦に関わった人になにか参考になるような「教訓」とかエピソードを求めてもそういったものもない。普遍化は不可能なひとつの歴史なのだ。文章が見事すぎるためにフィクションかと疑いを持ったが、間違いなく事実あったことであり、発表にあたって著者は周囲の、これによって傷つくかもしれない夫や夫の両親にもきちんと話した上で公開に踏み切っている。登場するのは愛情に飢えた人物ばかりで、生きていく規範は頼りない宗教の曖昧な解釈。父親も気の毒な人ではあるのだが、しかし同時に猛烈なエゴイストであり、主人公にむかって（自分の実の娘に向かって）「お前はわたしのものだ。わたしにはその権利がある」と断言する。おぞましいのは、僅かに遠慮がちに描かれた父と娘の関係する場面よりもこれらのあまりにも自分勝手な求愛の、独占の、支配欲の言葉である。主人公が父親を愛していた、というのは事実だがそれは娘が親に愛されたいという意味であり、男女の関係を喜んでいた訳ではない。人間は自分を完全に客観的に記述することは出来ない、だからこのノンフィクションにも何らかの自己防衛や美化は含まれるだろう。それらを理性的に排除して読むのが本来の（あるべき）読み方なのだろうが、この本に限っては著者の言葉に素直に従って読み終え、あとは感性がこれを消化するのをじっと待った方が良さそうに思う。（この本をちゃんと理解出来る人間が世界に何人居るか）と薄っぺらい理解能力の我々にんげんをあざ笑いながらそれでもどこかにいるであろう「理解する読者」の存在に賭けて星５つ。

近親相姦ーその仰々しい響きに興味をひきつけられる者も多いことだろう。しかしながら興味本位で手に取とった者でさえ、見事なまでの裏切りにあう。読者は、痛々しいほど繊細で鋭い感性が生み出す著者の言葉の世界に引き込まれていく。かつて彼女が味わった悪夢、幻想の世界を追体験するのだ。ーそこはあまりに暗く、静かで、逆説的な心地よさが混在する。実の父親との不適切な関係、母娘三世代にわたる呪縛。彼女は、抉り出すかのように一つ一つをたどり、さらけだそうとする。まるでそれが定めなのだと言わんばかりに。一度扉を開けたら、我々はもはや傍観者ではいられない。

現在の話に過去のエピソードが細々と挿入されているが(勿論何かを象徴しているのだろうけど)文化の違いか私が鈍いのか効果がない。と言うより、今に集中できず、過去に興味も持てず邪魔な感じがする。作者の実体験若しくはそれに近いようなので、小説として世に出す覚悟が中途半端だったのかという印象をもった。なぜ、どう感じたかと言う肝心のところを自身の責任としてきちんと伝えていない。ので、辛いけど大負けに負けて星2つ。

Gosh, I just don't know where to start. This was an uncomfortably addictive read, cover to cover in a few hours. I've given it a 3 star simply because I didn't know what to give it. Without doubt this is well written. And I had a full understanding of what I was about to read. Nevertheless, there isn't anything that can prepare you for reading memoirs of a daughter who succumbs to her father's desire to sexually explore her. Equally distressing was the relationship she had with her own mother, grandmother and grandfather. It was so very sad to me. I can't recommend this book unless you are quite prepared to read about a father daughter incestuous relationship and other destructive relationships.

The surprise was that the main character could end up with a semi normal life after all that she went through. Interesting but perverse, with bad attitudes from so many people.Everyone trying to satisfy themselves at the expense of the main character.