Product Description

From the bestselling author of THE BINDING CHAIR, a searing memoir of a four-year affair between the author and her father. 'My father takes my face in his hands. He tips it up and kisses my closed eyes, my throat. I feel his fingers in the hair at the nape of my neck. I feel his hot breath on my eyelids.' Kathryn Harrison's parents married aged 17 but were forced apart by disapproving parents within a year. By which time their only child, Kathryn, had been born. She was not to see her father again until she was ten. Instantly, the two were attracted; they even looked alike. By the time Kathryn was twenty the two had fallen into a passionate affair. Her relationship with her mother had never been easy and now there was this added complication, made worse by the obvious love which still existed between her parents for each other. In this beautiful, honest and shocking account of the years of her affair with her father, Kathryn Harrison confirms her growing reputation as one of the most significant literary voices of our times.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #227271 in Books
• Published on: 1998-04-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Review
* 'One of the most startling books you are ever likely to read.' Observer * 'Powerfully written, utterly compelling.' Mail on Sunday * 'Shocking, terrifyingly honest -- and beautifully written.' Elle * 'Disturbing, provocative and articulate. One of the most talked-about books of the year.' Cosmopolitan * 'The Kiss is remarkable for its candour, but also for its elegance, its sense of morality, and its generosity of spirit.' Sunday Telegraph

Gill Hornby, Observer
'One of the most startling books you are ever likely to read.'

Mary Karr, author of The Liar's Club
'I couldn't stop reading this. I'll never stop remembering it.'

Customer Reviews

Disturbing
I am glad that I read 'The Kiss' as it has opened my eyes to a horror that I previously thought unspeakable. Reading Kathryn Harrison's account of her incestuous relationship with her own father is not an easy thing to do, but I was impressed by her poetic prose and style that managed to shock me to the core and break my heart all at the same time.

This is not a satisfying or easy read, but true stories don't have happy endings, and I certainly do not regret reading this book. It is an important story, and I see Harrison's reason for writing it as a couragious break for freedom from the emotional scars and memories that have bound her for so long. I congratulate her for this piece of work, as it shows that victims can become stronger than the abusers, which is an inspiring and reassuring thought.

Upsetting and horrifying as it was, I feel my eyes have been opened by this book and I think that is an important read for everyone in our society.

Forget all your preconceptions about this book
I had heard so much about this book before I read it, and none of the things I had heard were true. Read this book from your own standpoint. Be ready to read with an open mind and set aside your judgments and preconceptions. This book has got the power to shock. Some may not get past the incest aspect. But if you can get past that, if you can see further into what this woman has experienced and what she has to say about it, you will see what this book is really about. You could read this book in one sitting, and I would recommend that. Compelling, fascinating, disturbing, insightful and genuinely harrowing.

A FATHER/DAUGHTER TABOO...
This is an elegantly written memoir, searingly painful, yet, at the same time, strangely compelling, about a young woman who grew up in a dysfunctional household, raised primarily by her grandparents. Her undemonstrative mother, who lived apart from her daughter during her formative years, was emotionally distant, and her father, from whom her mother was divorced, was physically absent.

When she was reunited with her father at the age of twenty, her hunger for love and affection was such that an unfatherly kiss led to a consensual and obsessive sexual affair with her biological father, an ordained minister. It was an obsession in which her own mother was seemingly complicit, treating her daughter as if she were a rival for the affection of the man that they both loved. The author's unseemly obsession with her father would torment and haunt her for years.

This is a beautifully told story about a parental betrayal so incomprehensible that it will leave the reader aghast. The author infuses the book with a sadness that is heartbreakingly palpable. Her evocative and lyrical prose, spare and intense, elevates this otherwise sordid and tawdry tale, making it a haunting memoir of a past that is best forgotten.