Exposure

I liked "The Seal Wife" by this author, but unfortunately I found this early novel, published in 1993, about a train-wreck of a diabetic woman who shoplifts and does drugs, to be disappointing. Ann Rogers, the main character, was relentlessly and obsessively photographed by her father in a variety of inappropriate situations. But rather than delving into the artistic and philosophic issues raised by their relationship, the novel devolves into a tabloid-style narrative that relies on faked official documentation and Ann's own italicized memories to break up an increasingly tedious portrait of a woman unable to help herself. ( )

Exposure by Kathryn Harrison (1993) ( )

There was a kind of woman who was very fashionable throughout the nineties - intellectual, talented, beautiful, damaged in some vague and unspoken way. These women made a performance of their damage and of their self-destruction and took us all along for the ride. Kathryn Harrison, with her memoir of incest with her father The Kiss was certainly one of them. I think also of Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation) and to a certain extent Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness), although I honestly think Jamison is ultimately more scholarly and less transgressive than the other two (and ultimately more successful). Ann Rogers, the main character in [book:Exposure: A Novel|208204] is definitely one of them.

Harrison's prose is razor-sharp and her characterizations are clear and unmuddied, but there's something dishonest at the heart of this novel and I can't quite put my finger on what it is. Perhaps it is the way that sickness and misery are romanticized through this character. Perhaps it is the cold and enabling nature of the people around her. Maybe it's the refusal to truly examine the relationship between father and daughter that is at the center of all of this misery.

Does Harrison capture what it feels like to begin spinning out of control in this way? Yes and no. Yes, in that Ann is certainly spinning out of control and no, in that her wealth privilege ultimately cushion her in a way that takes the reader and all of the characters in the novel out of the story. Depression and suicidal self-destruction are neither glamorous nor pretty - Harrison spends too much time on and just past the edge of pretty to make this book truly work. ( )

Something about this book compels me to read it again every so often. The self-destructive main character draws me in, and I like Harrison's descriptions of the photography. Disturbing but engrossing --- it never takes me long to get through the book, but every time through, I enjoy it. ( )

This was really a work of fiction and I enjoyed it very much! ( )