SOURCE: “Novelist Kathryn Harrison's Memoir of Her Affair with Her Father,” in Chicago Tribune Books, April 20, 1997, p. 3.

In the following negative review of The Kiss, Kaufman states that the distance and vagueness of Harrison's narrative voice weaken the memoir's hold on its readers.

There are lots of really swell ways for authors to market their works these days: Concoct an elaborately clumsy piece of fiction but swear on a stack of Publishers Weeklys that it's non-fiction (check out Sleepers by Lorenzo Carcaterra). Slap between covers what is essentially non-fiction, call it fiction and credit it to Anonymous (Joe Klein's Primary Colors). Give potential customers something extra for their money by outfitting the book with a CD—it's got a good beat and you can read to it (a la Joyce Maynard and Laura Esquivel)! Or (with, perhaps, a certain amount of cynicism) put forward a memoir that traffics...