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Overview

Exquisitely and hypnotically written, like a bold and terrifying dream, The Kiss is breathtaking in its honesty and in the power and beauty of its creation.

In this extraordinary memoir, one of the best young writers in America today transforms into a work of art the darkest passage imaginable in a young woman's life: an obsessive love affair between father and daughter that began when Kathryn Harrison, twenty years old, was reunited with a parent whose absence had haunted her youth. A story both of taboo and of family complicity in breaking taboo, The Kiss is also about love—about the most primal of love triangles, the one that ensnares a child between mother and father.

Praise for The Kiss

“I couldn’t stop reading this. I’ll never stop remembering it.”—Mary Karr, author of The Liars’ Club

“Only a writer of extraordinary gifts could bring so much light to bear on so dark a matter, redeeming it with the steadiness of her gaze and the uncanny, heartbreaking exactitude of her language.”—Tobias Wolff, author of This Boy’s Life

“Beautifully written . . . jumping back and forth in time yet drawing you irresistibly toward the heart of a great evil.”The New York Times

“Like all good literature, The Kiss illuminates something that we knew already, while also teaching us things we had not even suspected.”Los Angeles Times
 
“A darkly beautiful book, fearless and frightening, ironic and compassionate.”—Mary Gordon, author of Circling My Mother
 

“Harrison’s story is her own, but it is also a brilliant fiction, densely mythic, sometimes almost liturgical sounding and raw. She is both author and protagonist of a dark pilgrim’s progress.”The Atlanta Journal and Constitution

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780307767370
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Publication date: 05/04/2011
Sold by: Random House
Format: eBook
Pages: 256
Sales rank: 764,404
File size: 2 MB

About the Author

Kathryn Harrison's novels include Thicker than Water and Exposure, both New York Times Notable Books, and Poison, called "powerful and hypnotic" by The New York Times and "a masterpiece" by Lucy Grealy.  Harrison lives in New York.

Read an Excerpt

We meet at airports. We meet in cities where we've never been before. We meet where no one will recognize us.

One of us flies, the other brings a car, and in it we set out for some destination. Increasingly, the places we go are unreal places: the Petrified Forest, Monument Valley, the Grand Canyon -- places as stark and beautiful and deadly as those revealed in satellite photographs of distant planets. Airless, burning, inhuman.

Against such backdrops, 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.

We quarrel sometimes, and sometimes we weep. The road always stretches endlessly ahead and behind us, so that we are out of time as well as out of place. We go to Muir Woods in northern California, so shrouded in blue fog that the road is lost; and we drive down the Natchez Trace into deep, green Mississippi summer. The trees bear blossoms big as my head; their ivory petals drift to the ground and cover our tracks.

Separated from family and from the flow of time, from work and from school; standing against a sheer face of red rock one thousand feet high; kneeling in a cave dwelling two thousand years old; watching as a million bats stream from the mouth of Carlsbad Caverns into the purple dusk -- these nowheres and no-times are the only home we have.

Interviews

On Friday, June 26th, barnesandnoble.com welcomed Kathryn Harrison to discuss THE KISS.


Moderator: Welcome, Kathryn Harrison! Thank you for taking the time to join us online this evening. How are you doing tonight?

Kathryn Harrison: I am doing fine, thank you. Thanks for having me.


Pac87@aol.com from AOL: Was there a single defining conscious moment that you knew that you were going to write this book?

Kathryn Harrison: Yes, I had written a couple of pieces of it in essay form, but I was working on a novel that was not going as well as I had hoped, and I had a meeting with my editor. We discussed what was wrong with the novel, and while I hadn't intended to say this, I found myself suggesting to throw the current novel out and begin a new book. And my editor asked what I wanted to write. I said I wanted to write a nonfiction book about my relationship with my father. I found myself shocked. She was shocked, too. It was never anything that I planned to write.


Cynthia Clark from Phoenix, AZ: Do you read your reviews? If so, how does the review of a memoir differ in personal effects from that of a review of one of your novels? I'm thinking of a review of THE KISS in The Washington Post, I believe, that seemed a total personal attack and also, to me, raised the question, "If a story doesn't 'belong' to the person who lived it, who does it belong to?"

Kathryn Harrison: The first thing I would like to say is that all work is autobiographical, so there is a less difference between a novel and a memoir than a reader might casually suppose -- not that memoirs are untruthful, but that fiction novels are terribly autobiographical. I feel as intimately connected to my fiction as my nonfiction, and I read my reviews. The Jonathan Yardley review in The Washington Post was certainly a personal attack and was followed by two further attacks on the op-ed page. While the first one stung, I was grateful ultimately that it was so vitriolic, because it seems to have far more to do with Mr. Yardley than it did with me. In that case, the extreme, almost hysterical tone of the review gave away its total lack of objectivity.


Becky from Austin, TX: THICKER THAN WATER is the same story but fiction. How do you respond to critics who say it is the same story twice?

Kathryn Harrison: THE KISS was in many ways a response to my own disappointment with my first novel, THICKER THAN WATER. The story is the same, and yet the narrator of my first novel is younger than I was when I met my father. She is more passive and more of a victim of her father's lust and cruelty than I knew myself to be. In that sense, I felt after the publication of THICKER THAN WATER that I had betrayed my own story and what I understood to be true about a very painful passage in my life. At the time that I began THE KISS, I was prepared to be honest with myself and with readers about my life as a young woman, especially about the angry, destructive relationship I had with my mother. As a person and as a writer, I felt that I needed to own the story as a work of nonfiction. While the differences between the two books may not be dramatic to a casual reader, they are to me.


Beth from Massachusetts: First I want to tell you how absolutely spellbinding I found THE KISS. With such honesty in your reflections, were you concerned about reactions from those who knew you -- family and so on? How did you handle those concerns if you had them?

Kathryn Harrison: While I never told this story to anyone besides my husband and two very close friends, I don't think it came as a surprise to those who know me. My grandparents and my mother are dead. My children are too young to know about either the story or the book. I was worried about telling my husband's parents. This is probably the last story anybody would want to share with their in-laws. But I knew them well enough to anticipate their support. The shortest answer to the question was that I had come to a point where my relationship with myself and with the truth was more important than what anybody might think about me. My only remaining concern is the necessity of sharing this with my children, but it is a story I planned to tell them anyway when they are ready, and that is separate from the book.


Paul from Morris Plains, NJ: So, it's a year later. Would you write this book again if you had a chance to do it all over?

Kathryn Harrison: Absolutely!


James Covington from Raleigh, North Carolina: As a child, were you inspired by any one particular person? Who was that person?

Kathryn Harrison: As a young child, Helen Keller and Amelia Earhart. When I was a little older, I had a feverish relationship with certain Catholic saints.


Megan from Brooklyn: I just started reading the book. What was your mother's reaction to THE KISS? How about your father?

Kathryn Harrison: Well, my mother is dead, and I have been estranged from my father for 12 years.


Emmie from Hoboken: How does your writing schedule differ from that of your husband's? Do you ever collaborate or offer suggestions on each other's works? MANHATTAN NOCTURNE was a stunning novel and I still retain vivid images from EXPOSURE even though I read it three years ago (I always get paranoid when I go to Tiffany's). I love reading your work as well as your husband's.

Kathryn Harrison: My best work hours are during the day, when my kids are in school. My husband [Colin Harrison] is the deputy editor of Harper's magazine, so he works during the night, during the weekends, whenever he can. We do read each other's work and offer suggestions, although I am far more secretive about mine and rarely share it in process.


Dutch from Independence, MO: Did you draw this book from personal diaries, or did you just remember everything that happened?

Kathryn Harrison: I am not a journal keeper, so I had few personal records other than correspondence. My father was a daily letter writer, and reviewing his letters reminded me of a few things and helped to clarify chronology.


Phillip from Darien, CT: Did your father's parishioners ever find out about this affair?

Kathryn Harrison: Not to my knowledge.


Paula from Hanover, NH: Do you feel like your father took advantage of you? Do you feel like you were in full possession of your reasoning abilities at the age that this affair happened?

Kathryn Harrison: Yes, I suppose he did take advantage of me. He was a good deal older. When I met my father, I was incapable of turning down attention or love in any form, and I was deeply ensnared in a troubled relationship with my mother, one through which I filtered all experience. I suppose that adds up to my being confused. And not in full possession of my reasoning abilities. It was not an affair that had anything to do with being rational.


Helen Simmons from La Jolla: I hear that you have gotten a big response from other women who have been in a similar situation. Do you respond to them all? What do you say?

Kathryn Harrison: I always answer my author mail. And what I say really depends on the letter I receive.


Anna from Schenectady, NY: What are your thoughts on the popularity of memoirs? Do you think it's a recent thing or do you agree that memoirs have always been part of the literary landscape?

Kathryn Harrison: Memoirs have certainly existed at least since St. Augustine. We seem to be experiencing a period of enthusiasm for their apparent authenticity. Voyeurism is a part of human nature, and memoirs feed the same need that has inspired so many talk shows, and Real Life TV.


Tabitha from Greenwich, CT: Dear Ms. Harrison, I want to commend you on a great book with THE KISS. What are you working on now? What can we expect next from you, and when will it be published?

Kathryn Harrison: I am finishing up a novel that is loosely based on parts of my grandmother's early life. I expect that it will be published in about a year.


Miriam Weathers from Golden, CO: Was writing this book cathartic in any way? Did it help you heal from this experience? Also, isn't it hard to have so many people know so many details -- and make so many judgments --about your life?

Kathryn Harrison: It wasn't so much cathartic as it was my coming to terms with an acutely painful relationship that I had in some measure denied for years. There is relief in admitting what happened and accepting my responsibility. I am sure this will always remain painful. As for my privacy, most of my life remains hidden and is not available for comment. I am not terribly concerned with what people think of me. My sense of my public self is invested in the quality of my work.


Terrence from Medford, MA: Will we ever see this story on the big screen?

Kathryn Harrison: There are no plans as of now.


Kim from Out There: Did you find yourself in therapy because of what happened between you and your father?

Kathryn Harrison: I am still in therapy because of what happened between me and my mother.


Joe from Baltimore: Good evening, Ms. Harrison. In reply to a previous question concerning the character in THICKER THAN WATER, you said that that character was "more passive and more of a victim of her father's lust and cruelty than you knew yourself to be." Is it because of the age difference, or willingness, between yourself and the character, that you consider yourself "less" victimized?

Kathryn Harrison: Both...


Michelle Williams from College Park, GA: What does your father think about your writing this memoir? Has he accepted it, or is he in denial about what happened?

Kathryn Harrison: I have no contact with my father and haven't for many years.


Cory from Houston: How did you know you wanted to be a writer? How did you first get published?

Kathryn Harrison: What I really wanted to be was a doctor. Writing is an addiction and the way I explain the world to myself.


Bailey from Richmond,VA: Did you tell your friends about your affair with your father when it was going on? Did you confide in anyone?

Kathryn Harrison: No one.


Kyle Schwartz from Brooklyn: Will you ever write a book with your husband, Colin Harrison? Thanks for taking my question, Ms. Harrison.

Kathryn Harrison: We collaborate on so many other things, I don't think we will be writing a book together.


Marlene from Yardley, PA: Were you acting out of some sort of rebellion against your mother? I haven't read THE KISS, but I am curious about your relationship with your mom.

Kathryn Harrison: My mother was a very young and troubled mother whom I loved without measure. By the time I had met my father, I was very angry with her for abandoning me. The three of us became ensnared in a love triangle. I understood that my mother was still in love with my father, and his obsession with me was valuable for the pain it caused her. I guess that adds up to acting out.


Moderator: We're thrilled you could take time out of a hot New York day to chat with us, Kathryn Harrison. It's been a fascinating discussion. Do you have any final words for the online audience?

Kathryn Harrison: I would just like to thank everyone for their interest. So much of writing is isolated, and I always value the chance to meet readers.


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