A Book Review of
The Kiss, by Kathryn Harrison
I’m surprised to see the precision and coolness with which the author recounts her childhood trauma. Usually people do not remember traumatic experiences as clearly as they do good ones, since first, trauma does not make sense and thereby defies logical memory, and second, the brain shuts down when hurt too badly as a form of self-protection. In the archive of subconsciousness traumatic memories are scattered all over the place, in bits and pieces, and when they are recalled into consciousness they are often shrouded in a dreamy fog.
Not in the case of this book.
The author has a style that is literary, but not literary in a distant, unapproachable way, but intimate and human. Her words carry a poetic rhythm, but the picture they draw is never bleary nor drifting. Her language is precise, with the certainty and calmness a surgical knife could use to slice open a festering wound. Her voice is honest and sincere. The words weigh down on readers’ mind with tangible horror.
My appreciation of the style left aside, the book also discusses a very important topic. It tells a child abuse story from the victim’s perspective, and demonstrates how much lasting damage parental abuse can do to a trusting, loving child. The author’s abusive mother uses the unconditional trust of her child to encroach on the child’s mental and bodily boundaries, forces her to ignore her own feelings, to submit and comply. Her mother manipulates her through insults, physical violence and deliberate neglect. The abuse suffocates and poisons a child’s mind. Suffocated, the child turns to self-destructive thoughts and behavior. Poisoned, the child is led to believe the abuse was done because of love. Horror, weariness and humiliation are what love ought to feel like.
Such a child then becomes an easy prey for sexual predators, like an immunosuppressed host for hungry parasites. In this case the author falls into the trap of her perverted biological father, but her falling starts way before the re-union with her estranged father. It starts when she watches her sleeping mom in craving, when she is forced to learn subjects in a way more of torture than education, when she is not able to slap away the hand that shoves a diaphragm into her vagina, during a medical check authorized by her mother. She has been violated, again and again, by her mother, long before her father takes advantage of her wounded state.
The mother is always the first one to cut a hole into a girl’s heart. Easily done when she is too young and too inexperienced to put up any defense, when her body is small, her knowledge is scarce and her strength is undeveloped, when she has no choice but to give out all her trust to people she has no choice but to depend on. Once a hole is left open, anyone with a malicious intent can insert a straw into her heart and party on her blood for food and pleasure.
