Searing confession or calculated sensationalism? That's the question buzzing about this account of the devastating affair in which the author, then in her early 20s, became sexually involved for four years with her minister-father.
The controversy isn't really about the taboo topic. After three well-received novels that plumbed the psychoerotic depths, a certain kinkiness has become Harrison's calling card, and the actual encounters here between Dad and the daughter he left as an infant are handled nongraphically. Instead the issue is why the writer, at 36 the wife of novelist Colin Harrison and mother of two young children, recycled a story she had told in her 1991 debut novel, Thicker Than Water—only this time packaging it in exhibitionistic Oprah-ready wrap.
There's no ignoring the similarity of the two tales. Both are dark voyages of self-discovery in which first-person narrators struggle against spectacular dysfunction: narcissistic teen mothers who move out during their daughters' childhoods, spectral father figures, anorexia, self-mutilation and incestuous couplings less about lust than about longing and anger. But Harrison handles the raw material very differently here. Stripped of her novel's distracting detail, The Kiss is a more assured work—and would be even without the frisson of the forbidden.
Ultimately, Harrison's motivation is a question for her, her family and her therapist. But for readers willing to accompany her across some difficult terrain, The Kiss offers a haunting journey not easily forgotten. (Random House, $20)
by Christopher Buckley
How do you mix a wry martini, Chris Buckley-style? Combine the driest 100-proof wit and a dash of slapstick, shake vigorously in a loving parody of macho flair. Always use a sterling shaker—only the best for the son of conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. and best-dressed perennial Pat Buckley. Pour with self-deprecating irony. Add an olive of old-fashioned wisdom.
Wry Martinis collects bits and pieces ("magazine stuff") by the author of Thank You for Smoking, a wickedly funny novel that roasts the tobacco lobby. The "terminally Republican" 43-year-old Buckley, who left New York for Washington during the Reagan years and wrote speeches for Vice President Bush, now edits Forbes FYI and contributes regularly to The New Yorker.
His new book is peppered with short takes on news-making events. Politicians (from both parties), defense lawyers and PR flacks are the primary targets. The O.J. jokes are sly and imaginative but hopelessly dated by the civil trial verdict. Mad cow disease is still good for a quick laugh ("The McDonald's Corporation announced today its plans to introduce a new line of sandwiches called Mad Macs"), but by next year it will have gone stale. This is not humor for the ages.
The longer essays include a sharp-eyed portrait of the ego-constricted author Tom Clancy; a moving, uncharacteristically earnest meditation on the noncombatants of the Vietnam generation; a gee-whiz tour of the USS Nimitz; and a charming chat with Eppie Lederer (aka Ann Landers).
Knock back Wry Martinis all at once and you'll end up woozy and regretful. Best to savor it. Small sips will make you feel civilized and smart and just a little giddy—sort of like Chris Buckley himself. (Random House, $22)
by Marilyn Yalom
by Jean-Luc Hennig
These days it's conventional wisdom that we should listen to our bodies—especially if, as these two books suggest, what our physical selves have to tell us is the entire story of human civilization. Marilyn Yalom's instructive A History of the Breast (Knopf, $29.95) covers 25,000 years of changing attitudes toward the secondary sexual characteristics of the female of the species. From ample-breasted prehistoric statuettes to Madonna's pointedly bellicose bosom, from the Renaissance fixation on the eroticism of the breast to the '70s feminists' bra burnings, Yalom's study tracks our chronic inability to decide: Do breasts represent selfless maternal nurturance or are they treacherous weapons of predatory female seduction? The saga of corsetry, of popular views on breast-feeding, of religious icons and of contemporary women's health politics makes one realize that the seemingly straightforward breast is a highly complex symbol of the forces that, for centuries, have governed women's lives.
Jean-Luc Hennig's The Rear View (Crown, $21) aims somewhat lower. In short chapters with titles like "Curves," "Libertine," "Swimsuit," "Slang," "Pin-Up" and "Bottom-Watcher," Hennig borrows from the fields of anthropology, art history, literature, sociology, linguistics—and quotes liberally from vintage pornography—to create this witty, exhaustive overview of the human (and for the most part, female) behind. Less serious, more playful, philosophical, personal—more French—than Yalom, Hennig also locates the history of our culture in an erotically and symbolically charged portion of female flesh.
by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg
Rosenberg writes legal thrillers with strong female heroes who triumph over adversity; this time she leaves no woe uninfected. The troubles of Rachel Simmons, a rookie cop in a tiny Southern California town, mount so fast it's hard for the reader—much less Rachel—to keep up. Sexually abused as a child, Rachel struggles to raise her two children after losing her husband to cancer. She's weary from working double duty to pay his medical bills, and her best buddy on the force is pressuring her to perjure herself to back him on a DWI arrest. And that's before she reports officers for horrific acts of police brutality.
An ex-cop herself, Rosenberg writes with authority about the job. And she manages to keep the tension high. But Rachel's troubles and the novel's maudlin finish may leave you more exhausted than enthralled. (Dutton, $23.95)
Stories told to and by Robert Fulghum
Critics are to Robert Fulghum what bugs are to windshields: tiny smudges on the big picture. No matter how many reviewers savage his sappy, platitudinous books, the former Unitarian minister keeps churning out bestsellers—six in the last nine years, including his first collection of homespun homilies, 1988's All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. So sure is Fulghum of his magic formula that he barely broke a sweat on this latest, a slender assortment of romantic stories sent to the author by fans or solicited by him in the coffee shops and bars of his hometown, Seattle.
Some of these tales of amour are sweet and genuinely touching. Other stories suggest that Fulghum's New Age-speak is rubbing off on his readers: One woman says meeting a stranger on a train was "like falling into an infinite universe and yet being an intricate part of the whole thing." Fulghum's "perspectives" ("Love is a little taste of always and a big bite of nothing") don't help.
Quickly the urge to strangle a small pet kicks in, which is probably why Fulghum tells readers to sample these stories "a few at a time." Here's better advice for the romance minded: Skip True Love and go rent Ghost. (HarperCollins, $20)
by Robert McCrum
Page-Turner of the Week
JULIAN WHYTE'S BROTHER RAYMOND just might be the sibling from another planet. Julian, after all, is the caricature of fusty British bachelorhood, a contentedly insular barrister and county coroner in Sussex. His dashing big brother, on the other hand, has been living in East Berlin, married three times—and may have dabbled in espionage. But their worlds are destined to collide, with deadly consequences, in this deftly written tale of betrayal and guilt.
After the fall of the Wall, Raymond moves his family to Julian's poky village. Bewitched by his brother's mysterious Frau, Kristina, Julian begins a dangerous liaison. That is, until he starts to suspect that Kristina may be manipulating them both.
McCrum, author of five novels and literary editor of The Observer in London, maximizes the suspense as he slowly strips away the layers of lies in which the characters have cloaked themselves. Until the surprising endgame, you'll be guessing who the real pawn is. (Norton, $23)
>Mark Young
FOR THE RECORD
MARK C. YOUNG THINKS HE COULD BREAK the world record for standing on the wing of an airborne plane (3 hr. 23 min.) if only he weren't busy verifying the longest distance traveled by a man with a milk bottle on his head (70.16 miles in 18 hr. 46 min.).
As editor-in-chief of the U.S. version of the fabled Guinness Book of World Records—marking its 40th year with a commemorative 1997 edition—Young isn't eligible for the book, but he identifies with the dreamers who are. "There's a misperception that they are either mad or not mainstream members of society," says Young, 36. "In fact most of them are inspiring people who work hard at what they do." Well, maybe not the woman who called to announce, "My grandmother has had a fish head in her refrigerator since 1968." Says Young: "Thank goodness she called first."
It would take more than an unfumigated fridge to faze Young, an affable British transplant who became editor of the Book of World Records in 1989. While Guinness's London office has the final say, Young and his staff must sift through the 30 or so entries that arrive in his Stamford, Conn., office each day in order to separate legitimate record attempts. (20 videotapes of a man who set the mark for the most push-ups in 24 hours—46,001) from the stuff that should have been routed to Ripley's. "We get letters from people who claim to be able to do remarkable things with certain appendages of the male anatomy," says Young. "My favorite was something to do with balancing pumpkins." No need to see the video on that.
- Contributors:
- Pam Lambert,
- Adam Begley,
- Francine Prose,
- Cynthia Sanz,
- Alex Tresniowski,
- Lan N. Nguyen.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
