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"I somehow miss what I don't want to see--that my father himself is selfish, a narcissist, dangerous" (page 80)
Biologically, it was incest. Psychologically, it was devastating. Emotionally, it was toxic.
It begins when 20-year-old Kathryn Harrison's father, after 10 years' estrangement, travels to meet her--and forces an assaultive kiss on her. "I know it is wrong," Harrison recounts, "and its wrongness is what lets me know, too, that it is a secret" (page 69). The experience leaves the daughter isolated: She abandons school; she flees from her friends; she walls off her boyfriend ("Everything," she says, "takes more energy than I have" (page 75)). The experience makes her physically sick: shingles, narcoleptic sleep patterns, pneumonia, bulimia (pages 118, 166, 170). She begins cutting herself: "It's...a desire...for manageable pain, bleeding that can be stanched (page 153). The experience leaves her alienated from herself: "I can see past and through [the kiss] to the life I used to have, but, mysteriously, the kiss separates me from that life" (page 71).
What made the daughter so vulnerable that her father could so cruelly exploit her? Harrison spent her girlhood and teenage years trying to make herself invisible (even to the point of employing anorexia to "make [her]self smaller and smaller until [she] disappear[s]" (page 39)). And yet, her abusive father's eyes "somehow...see me into being" (page 63). The daughter has also been taught to remain silent: "I begin to learn the wisdom of keeping my feelings to myself" (page 36). In a world of pain, starved of love from her mother, the daughter begins stealing suicide-intended Seconals at age 14, and is anorexic a year later.
The very thought of such a suffering young woman being targeted by her long-estranged father--who cruelly exploits her hunger to be loved and appreciated and seen--makes for devastating reading. It will be a rare reader who can read this memoir without tears.
The daughter finally frees herself from her narcissistic father's vortex--thank heaven for small favors--and manages to craft a married family life of her own. That Kathryn Harrison could manage this, after all she's suffered, testifies to the authors astonishing inner resilience.
A unique book--a singular portrait of the racking torture a father's exploitation can cause a child.
Biologically, it was incest. Psychologically, it was devastating. Emotionally, it was toxic.
It begins when 20-year-old Kathryn Harrison's father, after 10 years' estrangement, travels to meet her--and forces an assaultive kiss on her. "I know it is wrong," Harrison recounts, "and its wrongness is what lets me know, too, that it is a secret" (page 69). The experience leaves the daughter isolated: She abandons school; she flees from her friends; she walls off her boyfriend ("Everything," she says, "takes more energy than I have" (page 75)). The experience makes her physically sick: shingles, narcoleptic sleep patterns, pneumonia, bulimia (pages 118, 166, 170). She begins cutting herself: "It's...a desire...for manageable pain, bleeding that can be stanched (page 153). The experience leaves her alienated from herself: "I can see past and through [the kiss] to the life I used to have, but, mysteriously, the kiss separates me from that life" (page 71).
What made the daughter so vulnerable that her father could so cruelly exploit her? Harrison spent her girlhood and teenage years trying to make herself invisible (even to the point of employing anorexia to "make [her]self smaller and smaller until [she] disappear[s]" (page 39)). And yet, her abusive father's eyes "somehow...see me into being" (page 63). The daughter has also been taught to remain silent: "I begin to learn the wisdom of keeping my feelings to myself" (page 36). In a world of pain, starved of love from her mother, the daughter begins stealing suicide-intended Seconals at age 14, and is anorexic a year later.
The very thought of such a suffering young woman being targeted by her long-estranged father--who cruelly exploits her hunger to be loved and appreciated and seen--makes for devastating reading. It will be a rare reader who can read this memoir without tears.
The daughter finally frees herself from her narcissistic father's vortex--thank heaven for small favors--and manages to craft a married family life of her own. That Kathryn Harrison could manage this, after all she's suffered, testifies to the authors astonishing inner resilience.
A unique book--a singular portrait of the racking torture a father's exploitation can cause a child.
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