Kathryn Harrison (1)Reviews

The subject matter is disturbing, yes. That's not what put me off of this book though. The author just came across as whiny, annoying and way too dramatic. I don't care for her writing at all.

Intertwined story of the daughter of a silk-grower (who has an affair with a priest and is therefore arrested by the Inquisition), and the queen of Spain, who fails to produce offspring and therefore is poisoned.[return][return]Interesting, it shows the absurdities of the 16th Century court, the belief systems of a Catholic country and the pressures on some to produce heirs and the pressures on others not to...

This has to be the most honest memoir I have ever read. The subject matter in almost any other context would be impossible to read about. The underlying story is deeply disturbing, but the writer's ability to shape and color, and place the events in a relatable storyline, is absolutely first rate. I know I am writing this 25 years after it has been published, but I read it as part of my research into writing my own deeply disturbing memoir. It was recommended in at least two how-to-write-a-memoir books I have read recently. Highly recommended within the framework noted above, but not everyone will be able to read it.

I find it so hard to write a review of this book that I can’t help but wonder how Kathryn Harrison wrote it. It was a New York Times bestseller when it was originally published in 1997 and has been read by many.The Kiss is a very disturbing story. It’s about incest. And betrayal. And mental illness. And a “man of God” who was anything but. But mainly it’s Kathryn’s story* and how she negotiated growing up and learning how to be a woman. She accomplished it–painfully–in the midst of predation and neglect and without even a pretense of protection from anyone. The writing is hypnotic, reflecting the way Kathryn felt drugged or poisoned by events and by the power of her father’s personality. The tense is present, making the reader feel as if events are happening “right now” and “always and forever.”

One of the fascinating things about this book has been the response of critics and readers. It tends to polarize people. There are many who sympathize greatly with Kathryn for what she went through and others who wonder why she was compliant. There are others who question her motives for making her family’s story public. People who despise the tell-all nature of many memoirs villify her for exposing a taboo subject.

The book’s arc seems to take an odd twist. It begins with how the father developed as such an obsession in Kathryn’s mind. She grew up without him in her life, witnessing him in the house as if he were a ghost. The story continues by showing how Kathryn was caught like a fly in the father’s web when they met as adults. And, finally, it moves to how their relationship ended. But the twist is that, near the end, the relationship with the mother is made central. There is a forgiving and coming-together of mother and daughter when the mother is dying. The book is dedicated to the mother: Beloved 1942-1985.

Because the book was so successful, I have to conclude that it is possible to twist and tweak to give a story the sort of long-range perspective the writer desires. Nevertheless, I wasn’t persuaded. The mother was not presented positively. She abandoned her daughter to be brought up by a mentally ill grandmother. Is that forgiveable? Forgiveable enough to make the book about the mother?

Or is the forgiveness on Kathryn’s part because Kathryn realizes that as her father ruined her life, he had done so with her mother’s?

I don’t think there can be a satisfying ending in the face of the tragedy that occurs in the book. But I am wondering if the through-line of the book is damaged or distorted by trying to make it “about the mother” at the end.

Have you read the book? If so, what do you think about the storyline?

Flawed or not, it’s a book you will never forget.

* I purposefully rely on Kathryn’s first name here to give her a breathing presence because of all she went through as a child and young woman.

Actual Rating: 3.5/5 stars
Review: This was — overall — a fun read. However, while reading it, I did feel like the research of Joan of Arc wasn’t used to its fullest potential. With a figure like Joan of Arc, where most of the contemporary writing was from her prosecutors from her trial, we get their views and opinions of her. However, I feel like the sources could have been interpreted in a few more ways (“reading between the lines”) and could have been used better, especially given that this book was published in 2014.. Other that, this was a good read.

I picked this up in a charity shop knowing nothing about the author but attracted by the innuit woman on the cover. Neither the innuit woman nor her photographer are credited - which about sums up the position of the women in the book. It did call to mind another woman writer of arctic adventures - Andrea Barrett - and there is some connection there in the viewpoint of a man's point of view but written by a woman. I found this less satisfying, a tale spun out to a novel's length, some disquiet as though she takes advantage of her characters, and the characters in the book not coming to life for me. But some really good writing in there to make the reading worth while.

Heard as an audiobook. It was a marvelous recreation of an era and another country. Masha, Rasputin's daughter, is requested by the Czarina to entertain the royal son, at a time which coincides with the Red Army uprising and captivity of the Romanovs.
I very much enjoyed Masha's perspective on her father, whom I've only heard of incidentally, and on the Romanov rulers, as real people and not greedy rulers. Altho there was quite a bit of opulence, it is not clear that the final Romanov's would have chosen that.
My only disappointment with the book were the sections at the end describing in excessive detail Alexei's first sexual experience.
The Author Interview at the end explained how Masha died, which is why the story of Masha in America didn't continue beyond her performance as a wild cat trainer for a circus.

This fictional book follows one of Rasputin’s daughters after he has been murdered. She (a teenager by this time) goes to live with the Romanovs and is there (I think) when they are taken away before they are murdered.

I can’t really tell you much more than that. I listened to the audio and it did not hold my attention at all. She seemed to be all over the place chronologically, which didn’t help. There would be something about her father, then living with the Romanovs and back and forth. Oh, and throw in some after the Romanovs were killed. Too bad – I usually do enjoy reading about the Romanovs.

I picked this book up as I was drawn by the blurb on the back which indicated that it would tell the tale of a Chinese orphan escaping her tradition-bound life which incorporated foot binding to create a new existence. However I struggled to like any of the characters and only finished it because I forced myself to persevere. Very disappointing

Fascinating

Ann Rogers appears to be a happily married, successful young woman. A talented photographer, she creates happy memories for others, videotaping weddings, splicing together scenes of smiling faces, editing out awkward moments. But she cannot edit her own memories so easily; images of a childhood spent as her father's model and muse, the subject of his celebrated series of controversial photographs. To cope, Ann slips into a secret life of shame and vice. But when the Museum of Modern Art announces a retrospective of her father's shocking portraits, Ann finds herself teetering on the edge of self-destruction, desperately trying to escape the psychological maelstrom that threatens to consume her.

I picked this up in a charity shop knowing nothing about the author but attracted by the innuit woman on the cover. Neither the innuit woman nor her photographer are credited - which about sums up the position of the women in the book. It did call to mind another woman writer of arctic adventures - Andrea Barrett - and there is some connection there in the viewpoint of a man's point of view but written by a woman. I found this less satisfying, a tale spun out to a novel's length, some disquiet as though she takes advantage of her characters, and the characters in the book not coming to life for me. But some really good writing in there to make the reading worth while.

This is my favorite type of historical fiction-great writing, fascinating topic, and and amazing storytelling. Loved it!

First, I was really sucked in by this book. It is simply great storytelling, using the sparest kind of writing, incorporating things like loneliness, meteorology, mathematics, sexual obsession, Alaska during WWI, etc. I mean there is a lot of fascinating stuff in this slim novel. I admit that I would be the first to say, Who cares about weather, or the math used to predict it? Well, in THE SEAL WIFE, Kathryn Harrison writes about these esoteric elements so well that she makes you care.

Harrison has written a half dozen or more books by now, but THE SEAL WIFE is the first one I've read, although I certainly remember all the publishing industry buzz nearly twenty years ago about her notorious memoir, THE KISS, which detailed an incestuous affair an adult Harrison had with her father. So, knowing that much, perhaps I should not have been surprised by the sexual detail found in THE SEAL WIFE, about Bigelow, a young weatherman in Anchorage, Alaska, who becomes obsessed with a mysterious, self-possessed and silent Aleut woman during the years of WWI. Harrison paints a darkly luminous portrait of the loneliness of frontier life in the land of the midnight sun, a rough, bleak region populated mostly by men.

Again, one wouldn't think reading about the mathematical calculations needed for weather forecasts or constructing a giant kite to send weather instruments miles into the sky would be all that interesting. Well, trust me, it is.

Far in the back of my mind, I keep recalling a novel I read years ago about an Irish fisherman who marries a "seal wife" - a riff on the Selkie legends - but I cannot for the life of me remember the title or author of that book. In any case, there are very subtle elements of that old Celtic myth artfully woven into the story of young Bigelow and his Aleut lover.

But I don't want to spoil any of this story for other readers. It is, however, one of the most mesmerizing books I've read in a long time. I LOVED it! Very highly recommended.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER

I've read several versions of Rasputins life and death, as well as the fall of the Romanoff family. This book didn't provide much new, except for the old Russian tales mixed in throughout the book. Stopped partway through.½

Though the author explores the psychology and motive of two siblings who survivied the murder of the rest of their family, one of whom executed the slayings, we ultimately learn little about the ostensible subjects, and more about the authors effort to understand her own disturbed past and present.

Kathryn Harrison's latest novel, Enchantments, takes place primarily in the year leading up to the execution of Russian Tsar Nikolay II and his family. After the murder of their father, Masha and Varya Rasputin are sent to live with the Russian Royal Family. It is Tsarina's hope that Masha has the healing abilities of her late father, Grigori Rasputin, who tended to Prince Alyosha, the Romanov heir who suffered from hemophilia. It is not long after the arrival of the sisters, however, that Tsar Nikolay is forced to abdicate the throne and placed under house arrest with his family. To pass the time and keep Alyosha's mind off his illness, Masha spins stories about the Romanov's, Rasputin, her own childhood and some Russian legends. These stories are intertwined with narrative that is focused on the reality of life under house arrest, as well of Masha's activities after the death of the Romanov's.

I very much enjoyed certain parts of this novel, including the sections of the narrative that give the reader insight into the history of the Romanov downfall, as well as those that provide a glimpse into the life and sufferings of young Alyosha. It is not difficult for the reader to appreciate the pain and despair that young Alyosha must have felt when suffering from a bout of hemophilia. I also liked Harrison's characterization of Grigori Rasputin, who rather than being portrayed as a 'Mad Monk' comes across as a misunderstood and sympathetic figure. Another positive aspect of this novel is Harrison's eloquent prose, which helps to illicit emotion from the reader.

While there is much to like about Enchantments, I do have mixed feelings about this book. Most of the novel is told from Masha's perspective, a character I found difficult to garner an interest in. Although Harrison has a lovely way with words, certain of her descriptions are overdone. While I enjoyed Masha's stories about both the Romanov's and her father, I found myself skimming over those stories that seemingly had little connection to the plot. Masha's post-Revolution life outside of Russia also held little interest to me. Lastly, I thought the constant jumps back and forth in time disruptive to the overall flow of the novel.

Despite my issues with certain aspects of Enchantments, I think the positives of the novel ultimately outweigh the negatives and for this reason I would recommend the book to readers interested in Russian history, as well as to readers who enjoy historical fiction with a more literary bent.

The Kiss by Kathryn Harrison
Memoir

Incredibly brave and poignant recounting of the author's dysfunctional relationship with her entire family. The focal point of her life had always been her mother and father, who had married young after becoming pregnant. She always felt invisible to her mother and wanted only to be seen and loved by her. Her mother was incapable. She had her own internal demons which left Kathryn abandoned, neglected, forgotten.

Her father, who was forced out by his wife's parents, left the family when she was six months old. She saw him only a few times as a child, and even though he had remarried, he and her mother still had an obsession with each other which Kathryn witnessed with curiosity on the few occasions they were all together.

After a 10-year absence, Kathryn and her father were reunited. She was then 20 years old, a college student. They both seemed to be mesmerized by each other--Kathryn feeling like she was getting to know herself when she saw similarities between herself and her father, same walk, same face, same gestures. Her father, by then a successful minister, seemed to have fallen into an obsessive trance when he was near her. He couldn't stop touching her, staring at her, crying over the years lost. Even though it seemed over the top, Kathryn ate up all the attention she received from him. She finally was being seen by someone who declared he loved her.

I don't know it yet, not consciously, but I feel it; my father, holding himself so still and staring at me, has somehow begun to "see" me into being. His look gives me to myself, his gaze reflects the life my mother's willfully shut eyes denied.

From a mother who won't see me to a father who tells me I am there only when he does see me: perhaps, unconsciously, I consider this an existential promotion. I must, for already I feel that my life depends on my father's seeing me.

Slowly and cunningly, her father forces her to give everything to him, all or nothing. He is determined to own her, to possess her. In his mind, he feels that God gave her to him. She becomes distraught and unable to function in daily life; she even leaves college for a while. All her attention is focused on him and she is unable to explain to anyone what is happening inside her. ...I know it is wrong, and its wrongness is what lets me know, too, that it is a secret.

Her story is really heartbreaking and maddening. It seems at every turn, she encountered yet another person who was incapable or unwilling to give her a safe place to grow. Abandoned by both parents, grandparents withheld physical affection. Several people saw the unnatural relationship between her and her father developing but did nothing but cluck their tongues. To be fair, at one point her mother did suspect that something was going on and brought Kathryn to her therapist. In the telling, however, it almost seemed like the mother was doing it not out of concern for her daughter, but possibly out of jealousy or the need to prove her level of importance in the "contest" for the father's love.

In any event, there was evidence of a cycle of abuse through generations (her father's father made a pass at her as well) and no one seemed to be doing anything to stop it, including the author herself. There was no epilogue informing/reassuring her readers that her younger sisters or even young women in her father's congregation were kept from his possible manipulation. All that being said, her honesty is commendable, she's a talented writer, and her ability to put words together in such a beautiful way is a rare gift.

In Poison, Kathryn Harrison tells two parallel tales, one historical, one fictitious, both set in Spain in the late 1600s. The historical plot line involves the ill-fated arranged marriage of French princess Marie-Louise to Carlos II, the physically and mentally feeble scion of the Spanish Hapsburg dynasty. The fictitious story is about Francisca, a poor silk farmer's daughter, who falls in love with a priest and runs afoul of the Spanish Inquisition. The two narrative threads are only tangentially connected, yet both illustrate the misogyny of Baroque-era Spain.

Harrison deserves credit for not reducing Marie-Louise and Carlos’s story to a retelling of “Beauty and the Beast”. Carlos is frail, childlike, and clueless about sex; his deformed physique and limited intellect are the result of many years of Hapsburg family coddling and inbreeding. Marie-Louise finds his habits, especially his penchant for drinking human milk, nauseating. When she fails to produce an heir, the royal court, led by her evil mother-in-law Marianna, conspires to get rid of her.

Both narratives rely to some extent on clichés. Tragic, forbidden love between a young woman and a priest has been done before, as has the mother-in-law from hell trope. The reader also must accept that as the narrator, Francisca somehow knows the intimate details of Marie-Louise's life, even though the two characters never meet.

Nonetheless, the book contains some wonderful details related to taste and scent, including, for example, the unpalatable egg dishes served at every meal because after one hundred years of dynastic decline, the royal household can no longer afford a variety of food. The narrative also contains heart-rending scenes of torture, animal cruelty, and death. Yet for those who can handle the sadness, injustice and suffering that are vividly described in this book, as well as the occasional overused plot device, it is a rewarding read.

A good read about a subject rarely discussed. The author courageously reveals her incestual relationship with her father (as an adult). An eye-opener! She invites you to explore the complexities of such a relationship after you've made your official judgements about people in these situations.
Recommended.

SEPTIEMBRE , 2012

One Word : Disturbing.

----------------

EDIT : ENERO , 2014

Y es lo mas raro que escuche , lei o aprendi - pero , si , hay un trastorno (o como se le diga) que se llama ATraccion sexual genetica .

ES tan perturbador que no se que decir al respecto .

Joan of Arc
Kathryn Harrison
Doubleday, $28.95, hardcover

If Lisbeth Salander or Katniss Everdeen is your idea of the perfect female fighting hero, then you'll love this new biography of the Maid of Orléans from Kathryn Harrison, who recently spoke at Colorado College. In Joan of Arc: A Life Transfigured, Harrison offers a new version of a familiar narrative: At 12, Joan begins hearing voices; at 17, she ends the English siege of Orléans; at 19, she's burned at the stake for heresy. Harrison reviews previous biographies and famous retellings, but also offers up her own interpretation of the story of Joan by focusing on her sexuality — not surprising, really, if one is familiar with Harrison's oeuvre, but very well done given the way spirituality gets incorporated into the discussion. This is not so much a biography as an interpretation of a life, and with an interesting life in the hands of a gifted author, it's well worth the time. — Kel Munger

Reviewed in the Colorado Springs Independent: http://www.csindy.com/coloradosprings/joan-of-arc-in-real-life-ebola/Content?oid...

Kathryn Harrison’s Joan of Arc: A Life Transfigured is the best biography I’ve read in quite some time—probably the best one I’ve read in years.

I’m one of those non-Catholic girls who grew up reading lives of the saints and fantasizing about converting (at least while I was still in junior high). My first encounter with Saint Joan took place in the gift shop at Holy Hill, a large Catholic church near my mother’s childhood home that was a destination for Catholics and non-Catholics alike because of the views its tower gave of the surrounding countryside. I picked up a comic-book version of Joan’s life, read it in the car on the way home, and was hooked.

Harrison’s book is very much unlike that first version I read, which was pure hagiography. I may be wrong, but I suspect Harrison has been interested in Joan for quite some time. She’s thought about Joan, looked at her from this angle and that, pondered the way she’s been received by different generations.

In fact, Harrison’s book is something like four books in one (or perhaps the best pages of four different biographies excised and stitch together within a new cover. There’s the straightforward biography; the discussion of the way Joan’s life has been interpreted in the arts (theatre, film, painting); the consideration of Joan in the notions of gender prevalent in her own time; and a very interesting comparison of Joan with Christ. Early on she tells readers:

The life of Joan of Arc is as impossible as that of only one other, who also heard God speak: Jesus of Nazareth, prince of paradox as much as peace, a god who suffered and died a mortal… a messenger of forgiveness and love who came bearing a sword, inspiring millennia of judgement and violence…. More than any other Catholic martyr, Joan of Arc’s career aligns with Christ’s.

Harrison goes on to list some of these similarities in the opening of her book—a birth prophesied, an ability to command the natural elements and foresee the future, a body transfigured—and returns to these regularly throughout the book. (I’m hoping the above quote gives you a taste of her compelling prose style as well as one of her primary tropes.)

Harrison ends the first chapter with a penetrating observation: “It seems Joan of Arc will never be laid to rest. Is this because the stories we understand are the stories we forget?” Not only is Joan remembered, every generation wrestles to understand its own version of Joan. Shaw presents her as a religious reformer (despite her devotion to the religious practices of her own time). Brecht told her story twice; she becomes a hero of the working class in his Saint Joan of the Stockyards. In discussing these works, Harrison illustrates how tempting it is to hold up the mirror of Joan’s life and to see one’s own time.

In her own time, Joan was a heretic simply because she donned men’s clothes: a fact that was overlooked during her early victories, but made much of when leaders of church and government found it useful to have her toppled from her pedestal. Although witch burnings had occurred before her execution by fire, Harrison see Joan’s death as a turning point in European history: “Her trial, its verdict, and the publication of her example united for the three centuries’ worth of zealous, often hysterical, witch hunts amounting to the theatrically cruel execution of as many as a hundred thousand women.”

Harrison is a perceptive, eclectic thinker, and being able to savor four hundred pages of her research and reflections on Joan of Arc is an exceptional treat. Although the year’s not quite yet over, I feel confident that Harrison’s Joan of Arc will be the best biography we see this year.

The Seal Wife is one of the most beautiful books I've ever read. I just finished it and I wish there was more to read! It's a rather minimalist book with short chapters and sparse dialogue. It uses vignettes to pull the story along. As the book is mostly from inside Bigelow's mind, a self defined loner who is in Anchorage to forecast and study the weather, the book's minimalism beautifully captures the experience of being alone among others, an observer given time to absorb the surroundings and think about things.

If this just told the story of Joan of Arc, the peasant girl who heard the voices of dead saints, led an army to support an uncertain king, was burned at the stake as a man-dressing sorceress, and later became canonized as a saint, that would be enough to make Joan of Arc: A Life Transfigured a truly interesting book, but there is more to this biography than a detailed recitation of facts about her life. Along with relevant historical background author Kathryn Harrison also includes how each stage of Joan’s crusade to serve God and save France has been portrayed in popular myth, theatrical plays, cinematic film, and various works of visual art. Because of this expanded scope the book presents a larger picture of political history, and the history of culture, religion, common attitudes, and underlying beliefs than Joan’s tale alone would tell.

The writing is a smooth weaving of history, biography, legend, and reflection, and along the way Harrison corrects some common misperceptions about Joan, for instance she wasn’t quite the simple peasant many people then thought and still think she was. Harrison deftly compares Joan’s speeches, actions, and short life with those of Jesus, both to show how well versed in the Bible Joan herself must have been and to help explain why her story resonated so much with the highly religious people of her time. It’s an astounding story, well told, both inspiring and tragic.