Rating: 
Summary: very French and lean
Review: This book is a slice of decadence. I realize that no subject matter is too painful to read about so long as the reader has transcended the experience, digested it, and offers a poetic perspective on its levels, meanings, and insights. Kathryn's The Kiss is on my top shelf of favorites, right along side Annie Ernaux, Gide, and Flaubert. I was recently thrilled to learn Harrison's favorite book was Madame Bovary. Both passionate and self-consumed, this journey of a young woman offers an insight into a relationship that few would dare to look in the eye and take to the level that Harrison has. Only someone with great compassion, poetic skills, and years of therapy could write such a masterpiece.
Yesterday I was reading some Erich Fromm (psychology) essays and found his insights right in line with some of the physical and yet symbolic imagery that she explores in her honest memoir.
Rating:
Summary: Kiss and tell
Review: Kathryn Harrison write about what she, at one point in the book, calls the "unspeakable" - her ... relationship with her father that started when she was 20 years old. Being a memoir rather than fiction, we are taken on a personal journey as she explores the dysfunctional family relationships that led up to the affair. She also explores the effects the relationship had on her family and the events that finally gave her the strength to end it. It is a wonderful look into her troubled soul and the resources she draws on to heal herself and her relationships with her family. Since her father is a minister, we also get a glimpse into the kind of thinking that can cause men of the cloth to abuse their authority...
Rating: 
Summary: The Kiss of Damage
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: A creepy book
Review: This is a creepy book that speaks frankly of the author's actual afair with her father. By no means would I call it a satisfying read. It is rather short and I finished it in one sitting. I would start with this author's "Seal Wife" which is a far better book, also about obsessional love, then move on to this if you liked that.
Rating: 
Summary: a talented writer sharpens her knife
Review: Kathryn Harrison's harrowing account of her father's behavior toward her when he re-entered her young-adult life, will chill you to the core. Harrison is a gifted writer who brings all her skills to bear upon this account of her father's betrayal of ancient taboos, and total disregard of damage inflicted. Writing "The Kiss" was no doubt a mega-catharsis for Harrison. Why she published it, remains an open question. The best guess is she wanted revenge upon her father. Yet it seems to this reviewer that such soulbaring in making her story public could be damaging to her, as well, in that it is rather like a constant re-opening of wounds. Air and light will heal wounds, but a constant draft and a too harsh sun will prevent healing.
Rating: 
Summary: Huh?
Review: I fail to see the purpose of this book. What did the author want to accomplish by writing it? I hate to come across as cold and unsympathetic, but I find it hard to call what transpires "abuse". Abuse is what happens to children who are helpless to defend themselves or to know that a wrong is being committed against them. As a young women that grew up without a father, in a not-so-stable home myself, I feel somewhat justified in saying that all the author needed to do was stay away from her father to prevent this tragedy.
Aside from the topic of the book, I did not enjoy Ms. Harrison's style of writing. I enjoy good writing, am not a "Jackie Collins or Danielle Steel kind of reader" (no offense to any that are fans of these authors) yet I found this book boring and difficult to finish. Bottom line: save your money. This book is not as intriguing, nor is the author as sympathetic as you might think.
Rating:
Summary: The Kiss
Review: I thought Ms Harrison's book was extraordinary. The sensitivity and lack of 'sensationalism' she portrays in describing how she coped and responded to her situation was frankly remarkable. Especially the way in which she finally came to terms with her mother upon her deathbed and 'connected' with her after so many years was inspirational. Thanks to her for a most courageous memoir.
Rating: 
Summary: The slowest kiss ever
Review: Touchy topic, but if you can handle reading about a father molesting his twenty year old daughter, than try this one. But don't expect a story that moves a long. How can you critique a memoir, well it's not the true story that is the problem. You come to understand, and empathize how this yong girl was able to allow her father to start doing this at such an old age. But here is the problem with this book. It took me some time to read it. I could only muddle through 10-15 pages at a time.I write poetry so naturally i like metaphors, but this book is so filled with metaphors that if it was a person talking it would almost be sickening to hear. I just didn't really enjoy it, and i thought it was exhausting. Just a overuse of metaphors, and unessesary comparrisons out of nowhere as if she is struggling to make this dark story even more dark.
Would definately not recommend this to anyone.
Rating:
Summary: Brutal self-exposure
Review: Kathryn Harrison's The Kiss is a very thorough examination of her relationship with both her parents. The telling is very frank and the subject matter is shocking to those of us who have never had to experience it. A desperate love for a mother who rarely reciprocated it and a physical affair with her long-lost father are described with such simplicity that the reader experiences the traumatic events with Harrison. It was a fast read (I started and finished it on the train in one day) but a lasting impression on the brain. Highly recommended as a reminder that great people can come from brutal beginnings; that an unhappy childhood isn't everyone's excuse.
Rating:
Summary: How do we judge?
Review: Well first of all this is intensely readable and well-written and un-put-downable. The present tense narrative voice reminded me of Elizabeth Smart's "By Grand Central Station I sat Down and Wept" but the prose is more spare and the illicit lover, her father is demonized rather than idealized.
But this is presented as fact and we find ourselves (or I do) wanting to make morality judgements as much as literary ones. We want to decide where the fault lay, and ask such questions as: can we blame the victim? is there another side to the story? is this all true?
The incestuous father is slightly less blameworthy than some, since he met his daughter, virtually for the first time, when she was twenty; she was not financially dependent on him; she travelled long distances to visit him. There is no question of a fake memory (which I suspected in Cutter's "Memory Slips" also about an incestuous clergyman father). From her own self-description the author meets the criteria for what DSMIV calls "borderline personality disorder" which is a "blame-the-victim" pejorative sort of diagnosis although those afflicted with it suffer a great deal.
What was the connection between his religion and his crime? He sounds as if he gave himself a religious justification, like the Mormon polygamists, but he did not belong to a fringe evangelical groups with unorthodox sexual mores. He apparently later left the chiurch.
A lot of questions, a lot of food for thought, and a great book.
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