January 4, 2016
Harrison (The Kiss) offers 13 essays in this collection, all written over the course of a decade; most have been previously published. The essays are best read in order, as the reader is gradually introduced to the intimate details of Harrison’s life, including an unconventional childhood, an incestuous relationship with her father when she was a young adult, and a mother who left her with aging grandparents and later succumbed to breast cancer. Harrison’s essays range from disturbing to humorous; she’s now married and the mother of three children, and readers will chuckle as she describes the day she came clean about the identity of the tooth fairy. Her relationship with her grandmother is deeply examined, describing how the eccentric woman who cared for her in childhood (and whom she cared for in old age) was both charming and impossible. In the essay “The Unseen Wind,” Harrison remembers secretly observing her elderly grandmother at her mirror; the experience prompts the author to ponder the arc of her own life. In another poignant essay, she chronicles the death of her father-in-law, the man who taught her how to be loved and to love with purity and reverence. Whether discussing motherhood, marriage, pets, or the little and large crimes that families confess or conceal, Harrison writes with authentic curiosity and a thirst to fully understand herself and others.
December 1, 2015
Memoirist and novelist Harrison (Creative Writing/Hunter Coll.; Joan of Arc: A Life Transfigured, 2014, etc.) again taps the well of her personal life for a series of essays dealing with long-standing preoccupations and compulsive navel-gazing, the result being an alternately compelling and uncomfortable reading experience. While many readers will sympathize with the author, admiring her candor, courage, and flashes of excellent writing, these pieces will connect most strongly with readers as neurotic as she is--those prone to hand-wringing, crying jags, and obsessing, sometimes for decades, over the same, possibly unresolvable issues. For Harrison, writing is not merely catharsis, but dissection, a meticulous reading of the entrails of her experiences. Memory is the linchpin of the book, but the author is smart enough to know that memory is unreliable. In piece after piece, Harrison revisits (and re-evaluates) her anguish and confusion over her resentful young mother, a manipulative father (the author chronicled her incestuous relationship with him in The Kiss), her emotionally insatiable grandmother, the death of her much-loved father-in-law, and her fascination with Joan of Arc. The author also explores the joys of a happy marriage and the pleasures of raising three children, but it is the pain that lingers. Harrison is at her best in such essays as the moving "Mini-Me" and the incisive "The Forest of Memory," while the title essay offers what is perhaps the most interesting weave: luridly macabre imagination twined with real-life experience. Given the autobiographical design of the collection, it may seem churlish to attack the book for going where the author so often has gone before; yet Harrison is self-aware to the point of self-absorption and self-effacing to a fault. However, the author's intelligence shines, and these ruminations may encourage some to confront their own anxieties.
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Starred review from January 1, 2016
Eleven years and four bookstwo novels (Enchantments, 2012; Envy, 2005), a biography of Joan of Arc, and an inquiry into a horrific family murder (While They Slept, 2008) later, Harrison returns to memoir, the form that made her famous with The Kiss (1997), a true tale of incest. Harrison is mesmerizing in this set of linked essays as she matches the supple clarity and vital force of her polished prose to stunning candor. Harrison revisits her wounding, nearly surreal Los Angeles childhoodthe banishment of her young father, the misery of her young, largely absent mother, and the charm, tyranny, and neediness of her grandmotherextracting scenes of torment and hilarity that she mines for insights into the nature-versus-nurture question and the forging of the self. Harrison shares experiences poignant, hilarious, and dramatic about everything from out-of-control pets to her mother's death, caring for her nonagenarian grandmother, and her own medical emergencies. Along the way, she confesses to telling obsessions, including her enthrallment with pulp true-crime magazines and their grim, archetypal fables, which proved to be oddly cathartic as Harrison confronted her own family transgressions. Harrison's sterling and staggering essays of fear, psychotic selfishness, abuse, betrayal, love, caregiving, and loyalty are resounding examples of how pain and anguish can be alchemized into art. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Harrison is always a magnet for readers, but this family album has particularly wide and magnetic appeal, which the publisher will broadcast on all media platforms.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)
February 1, 2016
Since publishing her first memoir, The Kiss, Harrison has continued to astonish readers with honest revelations about her strange and traumatic past. The author's previous works have focused on her childhood and narcissistic parents. In this collection, however, Harrison meditates on family as unit and concept to highlight the pain, beauty, and complexity that necessarily features in such relationships. In a particularly poignant essay, she reflects on the death of her father-in-law, beloved not only for his good and generous spirit but also for giving her the paternal love denied by her biological father. While 12 of the 13 essays have already been published, they have been revised and reordered to achieve a potent narrative effect. As in her other books, Harrison's unflinching honesty, though sometimes disturbing, never approaches the lurid or sensational. She manages this balance by refusing to shirk from self-examination or self-censure. Indeed, her willingness to be vulnerable is awe-inspiring. That, combined with exacting, lyrical language, make the collection hard to put down. VERDICT Readers overcoming the psychic pain of their own traumatic pasts may find comfort in these pages, a reminder that they are not alone. [See Prepub Alert, 10/19/15.]--Meagan Lacy, Guttman Community Coll., CUNY
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
November 15, 2015
In more than a dozen essays that have appeared in venues from Allure to Zoetrope, notable novelist and memoirist Harrison ranges from her fisticuffs with truth as she talks with her children about Santa Claus to her put-it-to-rest thoughts about her incestuous relationship with her father. With an all-new essay, and the remainder have been revised and reordered.
Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from February 1, 2016
Since publishing her first memoir, The Kiss, Harrison has continued to astonish readers with honest revelations about her strange and traumatic past. The author's previous works have focused on her childhood and narcissistic parents. In this collection, however, Harrison meditates on family as unit and concept to highlight the pain, beauty, and complexity that necessarily features in such relationships. In a particularly poignant essay, she reflects on the death of her father-in-law, beloved not only for his good and generous spirit but also for giving her the paternal love denied by her biological father. While 12 of the 13 essays have already been published, they have been revised and reordered to achieve a potent narrative effect. As in her other books, Harrison's unflinching honesty, though sometimes disturbing, never approaches the lurid or sensational. She manages this balance by refusing to shirk from self-examination or self-censure. Indeed, her willingness to be vulnerable is awe-inspiring. That, combined with exacting, lyrical language, make the collection hard to put down. VERDICT Readers overcoming the psychic pain of their own traumatic pasts may find comfort in these pages, a reminder that they are not alone. [See Prepub Alert, 10/19/15.]--Meagan Lacy, Guttman Community Coll., CUNY
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.