Rating: 
Summary: Entrancing, Horrifying, Blindingly Honest
Review: In simple, powerful prose, Kathryn Harrison tells a story of something that no human being should have to endure, of the incestuous abuse that happened to herself.I find it stunning that Harrison was able to write about her abuse with such mental acuity, such wisdom, and such vicious honesty.While the events in this book were horrifying beyond belief, I simply could not put it down, could not stop reading it, and go back to it time and again. Like the narcotic kiss Harrison describes her father inflicting upon her, I find the book to be like morphine: powerful, seductive, addictive, and sickening. The worst of the reality in this book is that Harrison has exposed something that truly happens, something our society hides, something we pretend does not exist. This book is so real, it must be read.
Rating: 
Summary: Not deserving of the derision it engendered from some
Review: This is a beautifully written and constructed memoir, a work of art, not a work of calculated exploitation. Its use of present tense, flashbacks-and-forwards, and description are cinematic-- has anyone written a screenplay of this book? Someone should. Those reviewers who criticize Harrison for a lack of dimensionality in the characterizations of her parents and grandparents should remember that this is not a novel, however novelistic it seems. This voice is not omniscient; in fact, for much of the years described she is a sleepwalker in a nightmare, and a child at that. The book is very successful at capturing the essence of this experience from its author's tortured point of view.
Rating:
Summary: An astonishingly well written book
Review: While this book could have been shocking and impossible to read, Harrison writes it so beautifully that the reader is quickly drawn in. I read this in one night,and couldn't put the book down. Harrison does not waste one single word. Rather than frightening her reader, Harrison convinces us that what happened to her is the most natural,though not the most normal, of experiences, as traumatic as it was. It is nearly impossible to describe how beautifully Harrison has written about what could be a shocking and artless book. A psychiatrist I once knew was convinced that all women want to sleep with their fathers. Well, that was in the mid-60's, and that Freudian thought is old-hat now. But Harrison draws her reader into the dreamlike state she found herself in with great skill. I highly recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Outside Looking In
Review: It will prove interesting to see reviewers attempt to bend the content of *The Kiss* into some kind of recognizable, hence manageable, shape. Once catalogued as gothic, grotesque, pornographic or romantic, as brave or cowardly, an exploitation or an exploration, a descent into evil or an emergence from hell, *The Kiss* would become a manageable text and the reader could find a way to experience second hand this disturbing memoir of father-daughter incest. *The Kiss*, however, refuses to take a nice tidy shape for the reader's convenience. The clergyman father who later takes up the breeding of pit bulls belongs to Faulkner, the Jewish grandparents who raise the author tumble into the book from another planet, the mother who remains a cipher resists our every reading. Indeed, the entire book refuses, at all costs, to let us in -- no surprise, given the betrayal at its center. But there's something unsatisfying about this rejection of the poor languishing reader. In the end, this reader felt left just plain too far outside the circle of finely crafted prose.
Rating: 
Summary: Amazingly cynical
Review: Here's a wrtier. She's been to the Iowa Writers Workshop. She's married to the deputy editor of Harper's, the last bastion of upper west side smarmy NIMBY liberalism in the U.S. She's written some critically acclaimed novels, but sales are not as they should be (or her or publisher or hubby would like). What to do? Well, I would recycle the plot of my FIRST novel, style it as a confession a la Oprah and -- well, as one reviewer said, ka-ching! Brilliant, but nauseatingly cynical. Her New Yorker writer style, with its charming little images and two-bit solipism, might appeal to teens who like Nine Inch Nails, but this is not linerature for adults. It's a swinish attempt to cash in on the faux-confessional trend that dominated American letters in the late 90s, and succeeded magnificently. Colin and Kathryn Harrison are the Borgias of American fiction. As Lee said of Pope, "[They] should be suppressed."
Rating:
Summary: One long, flowing drink of water
Review: Kathryn Harrison's "The Kiss" reads like one long drink of water, fluid, clear, easy on the mind and the body. What I loved most about this book was the honesty with which is was written. Sure, some can argue that the flowery prose and poetic quality of the story obscured honesty, though I argue that this is precisely what gave birth to it. It's hard enough to write about such a sensitive topic without making it seem less gritty than it really is. Harrison should be praised for the pinache and integrity she pulled this tale off with. I've moved on to her other books because of "The Kiss". I suggest others do the same! Congratulations, Kathryn.
Rating:
Summary: Deeply Moving
Review: "The Kiss" by Kathryn Harrison is an amazingly powerful and intense book. The subject matter of incest is difficult to take, but it's done so honestly and with such poignancy that it allows the reader to be interested without judgement. Like other reviewers have said, I also saw similarities to "Lolita" but, this seems to hold a different tone on many levels. It's clear this book is not for everyone and it takes a certain sense of maturity to understand and appreciate it, but aside from the dramatic storyline, it's a wonderful novel.
Rating:
Summary: Touching and thought provoking!
Review: I had read Lolita shortly before I picked up "The Kiss." When I realized what the story was moving toward, I wasn't sure if I was ready to deal with the subject of incest and manipulation for another 200+ pages. Surprisingly, the book was not at all what I had imagined. It was truly touching and thought provoking. I completely understood the state that caused the events to unfold as they did. Harrison's descriptions are so vivid, helping the reader relate to the narrator's need for affection and acceptance. "The Kiss" is certainly worth the small amount of time it will take to read.
Rating:
Summary: A Worthy Journey
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Emotional, but hard to follow at times.
Review: This was a powerful emotional journey, albeit disturbing. Harrison's ability to explain, with detail, the state of her psyche in relation to her experience with not only her father, but her cold-hearted MOTHER, is amazing. But, at times, I could not follow her train of thought and the story itself: its prose weak at several key moments. Overall, she writes with unfathomable passion, but perhaps this passion does not give way to total clarity.
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