Kathryn Harrison Critical Essay | Critical Review by Ruth Scurr

Critical Review by Ruth Scurr

SOURCE: “Shoeless in Shanghai,” in Times Literary Review, No. 5067, May 12, 2000, p. 21.

In the following review, Scurr offers a negative assessment of The Binding Chair and suggests that The Kiss was an unfortunate turning point for the worse in Harrison’s career.

Kathryn Harrison had published three novels before The Kiss (1997), a memoir about her incestuous affair with her father, brought her notoriety. She was admired for breaking “the last taboo.” But she was also suspected of attempting to catapult a decent but unremarkable novelistic career into a more glamorous stratosphere. Grounds for this suspicion could have been located in the fact that Harrison's first novel, Thicker Than Water (1991), had a plot strikingly similar to her later memoir. The uncharitable interpretation of The Kiss is much more interesting retrospectively than it was in 1997, when it seemed mean-minded and cynical. Harrison's new novel, The Binding Chair,...
(read more)