SOURCE: “Blaming the Victim,” in Women's Review of Books, Vol. 14, No. 10–11, July, 1997, pp. 33–34.

In the following essay, Alther discusses the critical reaction to The Kiss and how it has changed the perception of the memoir genre, particularly as practiced by women.

The Kiss is a disturbing and moving memoir about Kathryn Harrison's four-year love affair with her father, which began when she was twenty. In spare, flat prose that mirrors her numb state of mind at the time, Harrison documents the dynamics of the deadly triangle consisting of herself, her remote mother and her frantic father, who was ejected from the household by his domineering parents-in-law when Kathryn was six months old.

Harrison's mother moved out when she was six, leaving the child in the care of these grandparents. Harrison saw her father only twice before she was twenty. She grew up harboring like a fatal virus a...