Rating: 
Summary: This is a heroic work
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Incest? No, the Human Condition
Review: Because of the reviews I have read, I was also somewhat skeptical about this book. Fortunately, I discovered this is a work of wrenching honesty which transcends the incomplete and misleading reviews I have seen. This book doesn't have a traditional happy ending, but it does affirm the optimism implicit in being human and being alive. Recommended highly.
Rating:
Summary: a must read!!!
Review: I thought this book was very interesting to say the least. Kathryn Harrison deals with a horrific incident as art. In her memoirs she talks about an incestuous affair between herself and her father. This book brings up issues of incest as mental and physical abuse. I can almost empathize with her. She grew up without a father; when he finally came back into her life she felt like she owed him something. He wanted to posess every part of her. Her biggest accomplishment, I believe, is that she includes explicit sex scenes between herself and her father without make the book sexual. She in no way romanticizes what has happened to her. She also does not act like a victim. I loved this book and would recommend it to anyone who has experienced sexual abuse.
Rating:
Summary: Beautifully written and powerful
Review: This is an elegantly written book. The writing is spare and lean, a little like Hemmingway. It has intense espisodes of a very dysfunctional family. The pace is even, and the prose without titillation, but the subject matter is the most affecting. Harrison tells her story without sensationalism, and in the context of her tale, it seems plausible, although outrageous. If there is a complaint, it is that Harrison does not tell us how she was able to survive so well. But she does tell a remarkable story with grace and style and lets the power of the subject drive the story home. I was captivated throughout and stunned at how someone so seemingly sane now could have gone through what she did. I would have liked to know more about how she survived.
Rating:
Summary: A highly personal story of confrontation with the past
Review: I didn't know what to expect from this book. Once I started it I found myself uncomfortable with how personal it was, often putting down the book, only to be drawn back to it, wanting to find out how it would end. Harrison has written a beautiful, moving piece of work, I am only sorry she had to live the story to be able to tell it.
Rating:
Summary: Couldn't put it down
Review: Harrison's soulless, pretentious novels have always left me utterly cold, and I started "The Kiss" with skepticism, both because of this and because of the prevailing opinion amongst my acquaintances that this book was a shameless bid for a best-seller and had little to recommend it. However. It gripped me completely, and although Harrison shows a disturbing lack of perspective, as if she hasn't progressed very far psychologically in the intervening years, the story goes a long way toward explaining why this is. The prose is flawless. The story is fascinating and touching and completely believable.
Rating:
Summary: The Kiss is a testament to the resilience of the human soul.
Review: The Kiss, by Kathryn Harrison, a memoir of her descent into hell after her seduction by her father, has generated tremendous controversy. Many readers and critics have accused Mrs. Harrison of a mercenary attempt to use and abuse her victimization. However, this is really the story of her struggle to free herself from her terrible past. Having heard Mrs. Harrison speak at the Miami International Book Fair recently, I have no doubt that this lyrical and compelling story is true. It is the story of a child's desperate need for the love of both parents. It is the story of how she made peace with her family and herself. It is a testament to the strength and resilience of the human soul.
Rating:
Summary: The Kiss
Review: Kathryn Harrison has shown once again the trauma and thelasting effect child abuse can leave. Her remarkable abilty to awakenfrom "the kiss" and free herself from her father's dark obsession with her show that she is one of the fortunate suriviors. The intense pain she feels at times strangle the reader with anger, fear and desperation. Cleary what she must have been feeling during those dark times. The pain of rejection from her mother to the strangling "love" of her father, only helped blind her to the real meaning of his affections. Ms. Harrison helplessly loved her parents for what they were, and ultimately for what they would never be. That helpless love led her on a journey of destruction and despair, until she finally found the courage to love herself.
Rating:
Summary: A breakthrough in Kathryn Harrison's stultifying fiction
Review: I found her novels glacially perfect, clinically sublime,ultimately empty. When I read "The Kiss," I realized thather distance had its own language. I wanted to murder the bastard who made her writing so cold.
Rating:
Summary: Inside the mind of an incest victim
Review: After reading a review of this book, I expected it to be very upsetting. Within 15 minutes of picking it up, however, I had finished the first two chapters, and I was hooked. I wouldn't say I enjoyed this book, but it was very compelling. The way the story is told let me understand the author's motivations in the affair without my finding her disgusting. Indeed, there is very little in the book that is actual graphic description. Rather, it is very well written and draws the reader in immediately. Even though I could see where the story was leading, I was intrigued by the author's ability to capture so clearly her feelings toward her parents, her intense hunger for her father, and how that hunger led to the affair. Ultimately, I was glad to see that she gathered the strength to extricate herself and to cut this very sick man out of her life. This may be too strong a story for some people, but I would recommend to anyone who is curious about people and what makes them tick. I would never have pictured myself reading this...Expand your horizons and give it a try!
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