SOURCE: “Kathryn Harrison: Her Harrowing Psychological Novels Are Fiction, but Seem Vividly Real,” in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 240, No. 9, March 1, 1993, pp. 33–34.

In the following interview, O'Connell offers a positive assessment of Exposure, and Harrison states that the events dramatized in her first novel, Thicker Than Water, are entirely fictional.

Kathryn Harrison's critically acclaimed first novel, Thicker Than Water, was a gripping story of incest, fatal illness and emotional deprivation. Her second novel, Exposure was called “harrowing but spellbinding” in a PW boxed review (“Fiction Forecasts,” Nov. 30); the plot features methedrine abuse, compulsive shoplifting and parental neglect. When a former colleague from her days as an associate editor at Viking learned that Harrison's third novel would invoke the Spanish Inquisition and its aftermath, he wailed, “Oh, fine, another happy little book from Kathryn!”

In person Harrison, 32, is anything but bleak. Her favorite color and most of her attire may be...