Kathryn Harrison Books In Order

Novels

  1. Thicker Than Water (1991)
  2. Exposure (1993)
  3. Poison (1995)
  4. The Binding Chair (2000)
  5. The Seal Wife (2002)
  6. Envy (2005)
  7. Enchantments (2012)
  8. Joan of Arc (2014)

Non fiction

  1. The Kiss (1997)
  2. Seeking Rapture (2003)
  3. Saint Therese of Lisieux (2003)
  4. The Road to Santiago (2003)
  5. The Mother Knot (2004)
  6. While They Slept (2008)
  7. True Crimes (2016)
  8. On Sunset (2018)

Novels Book Covers

Non fiction Book Covers

Kathryn Harrison Books Overview

Thicker Than Water

Isabel is the troubled daughter of charismatic but reckless parents who hastily wed, divorced just as fast, and distanced themselves from each other and their child. Left to her grandparents care, Isabel longs for her remote, glamorous mother and for a father who is a fading memory. Unable to control her agony, Isabel rebels in perverse and dangerous ways. A captivating novel that gives new meaning to Freud’s family romance, Thicker Than Water vividly illuminates the fragile line between love and the darker sides of passion.

Exposure

Luminous and affecting…
Exposure examines the often fine line between art and abuse…
. Taut in plot, beautifully realistic, and intelligently disturbing. Harper’s BazaarAnn Rogers appears to be a happily married, successful young woman. A talented photographer, she creates happy memories for others, videotaping weddings, splicing together scenes of smiling faces, editing out awkward moments. But she cannot edit her own memories so easily images of a childhood spent as her father s model and muse, the subject of his celebrated series of controversial photographs. To cope, Ann slips into a secret life of shame and vice. But when the Museum of Modern Art announces a retrospective of her father s shocking portraits, Ann finds herself teetering on the edge of self destruction, desperately trying to escape the psychological maelstrom that threatens to consume her. Astounding…
told in prose as multifaceted as a diamond, crystalline and mesmerizing. Remarkable hardly goes far enough. Cosmopolitan Impossible to put down…
Kathryn Harrison is an extremely gifted writer, poetic, passionate, and elegant. San Francisco Chronicle Exquisite, exhilarating, and harrowing. Donna Tartt, author of The Secret History and The Little Friend A breathless urban nightmare not easy to forget. Stark, brilliant, and original work. Kirkus Reviews starred review

Poison

Francisca de Luarac, the daughter of a poor Spanish silk grower, is a dreamer of fabulous dreams. Marie Louise de Bourbon, the niece of Louis XIV, dances in slippers of fine Spanish silk in the French Court of the Sun King and imagines her own enchanted future. Born on the same day in an age when superstition, repression, and the Inquisition reign the lives of these two young women unfold in tandem, barely touching. Each ho*ards the memory of her adored lost mother like an amulet. Francica’s obsession with her lover, a Catholick priest, will shaper her fate. Marie Loouise is yoked by political expediency to the mad, imptoent Carlos II of Spain. But even as their twin destinies spiral inexorably toward disaster, both Queen and commoner cultivate a dangerous, secret life dedicated to resistance, transcendence, and love. Written in gorgeous prose that has the sheen of silk, Kathryn Harrison’s Poison vividlyreminds us of the persistence of desire, the passion that exists between mothers and daughters, and the sorcery of dreams.

The Binding Chair

In poised and elegant prose, Kathryn Harrison weaves in The Binding Chair; or, A Visit from the Foot Emancipation Society a stunning story of women, travel, and flight; of love, revenge, and fear; of the search for home and the need to escape it. Set in alluring Shanghai at the turn of the century, The Binding Chair intertwines the destinies of a Chinese woman determined to forget her past and a Western girl focused on the promises of the future. Beautiful, charismatic, destructive, May escapes an ar ranged marriage in rural nineteenth century China for life in a Shanghai brothel, where she meets Arthur, an Australian whose philanthropic pursuits lead him into one scrape after another. As a member of the Foot Emancipation Society, Arthur calls on May not for his pleasure but for her rehabilitation, only to find himself immediately and helplessly seduced by the sight of her bound feet. Reforming May is out of the question, so love struck Arthur marries her instead and brings her home to live with him, his sister and brother in law, and their two girls, Alice and Cecily. In Alice, May sees the possibility of redemption: a surrogate for a child she has lost. And it is to May that Alice turns for the love her own mother withholds. But when the twelve year old is caught preparing her aunt’s opium pipe, she is shipped off to a London boarding school, far from the dangerous influence of the woman who will come to reclaim her and to control the whole family. The Binding Chair unfolds among scenes of astonishing beauty and cruelty, in a lawless place where traditions and cultures clash, and where tragedy threatens a world built on the banks of unsettled waters from the bustling Whangpoo River to the lake of blood in the Chinese afterworld. By turns shocking, exquisite, and hilarious, The Binding Chair is another spellbinding literary triumph by the writer whose work Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times has called ‘powerful and hypnotic.’

The Seal Wife

Stunning, hypnotic, spare, The Seal Wife is the masterly new novel by Kathryn Harrison, a writer of extraordinary gifts Tobias Wolff. Set in Alaska in 1915, it tells the story of a young scientist’s consuming love for a woman known as the Aleut, a woman who never speaks, who refuses to reveal so much as her name. Born and educated in midwestern cities, Bigelow is sent north by the United States government to establish a weather observatory in Anchorage. But what could have prepared him for the loneliness of a railroad town with more than two thousand men and only a handful of women, or for winter nights twenty hours long? And what can protect him from obsession obsession with a woman who seems in her silence and mystery to possess the power to destroy his life forever, and obsession with the weather kite he invents, a kite he hopes will fly higher than any has ever flown before and will penetrate the secrets of the heavens? A novel of passions both dangerous and generative, The Seal Wife explores the nature of desire and its ability to propel an individual beyond himself and convention. As she brilliantly reimagines the terrain of the Alaskan frontier during the period of the First World War, Harrison, a master of her material Mary Gordon, also evokes early efforts to chart the weather and reveals the interior realm of the psyche and emotions a human landscape that, in its splendor and terror, is profoundly and eerily reminiscent of the frozen frontier and the storms that scour its face.

Envy

‘Kathryn Harrison is a wonderful writer Spellbinding.’ The New York Times Book Review’A juicy story of psychosexual suspence’ The Wall Street Journal’Shockingly complex and compulsively readable.’ O, The Oprah Magazine’ Envy has to be considered another succcess for one of the most interesting writers of her generation.’ St. Louis Post Dispatch’Complex and disturbing Envy is a masterfully constructed, insightful novel of psychosexual suspense that explores the destructive power of loss, betrayal, guilt and envy an engaging, beautifully written story.’ The Boston Globe A compelling, beautifully written, well constructed look at family problems that initially might seem insurmountable . Harrison is a truly gifted writer. Deseret Morning News’The characters, their conflicts and their conversations do seem real, and their story, however improbable, will keep you turning the pages.’ Newsday Her ability to train an unflinching eye on some of the more frightening aspects of eroticism and the human psyche, combined with her uncommon wisdom, distinguishes her as one of the finest and most fearless storytellers writing today. BookForum Envy is full of Harrison’s astute, often mordant powers of physical and psychological observation the fact is that Kathryn Harrison is one of our more earnestly impassioned and intellectually engaging players. Long may she run. Elle magazineWill has a good sex life with the woman he married. So why then is he increasingly plagued by violent erotic fantasies that, were they to break out of his imagination and into the real world, have the power to destroy not only his family but his career? He s about to lose his grip when he attends a college reunion and there discovers evidence of a past sexual betrayal, one serious enough that it threatens to overpower the present, even as it offers a key to Will s dangerous obsessions. Hypnotic, beautifully written, this mesmerizing novel by an extremely gifted writer San Francisco Chronicle explores the corrosive effect of evil and how painful psychological truths long buried within a family can corrupt the present and, through courage and understanding, lead to healing and renewal. Like Scheherezade in the grip of a fever dream, Kathryn Harrison…
has written one of those rare books, in language of unparalleled beauty, that affirm the holiness of life, said Shirley Ann Grau, about Poison. And the same can be said about Envy. From the Hardcover edition.

The Kiss

We meet at airports. We meet in cities where we’ve never been before. We meet where no one will recognize us.A ‘man of God’ is how someone described my father to me. I don ‘t remember who. Not my mother. I’m young enough that I take the words to mean he has magical properties and that he is good, better than other people. With his hand under my chin, my father draws my face toward his own. He touches his lips to mine. I stiffen.I am frightened by The Kiss. I know it wrong, and its wrongness is what lets me know, too, that it is a secret. We meet at airport. We meet in cities where we’ve never been before. We meet where no one will recognize us.A ‘man of God’ is how someone described my father to me. I don ‘t remember who. Not my mother. I’m young enough that I take the words to mean he has magical properties and that he is good, better than other people. With his hand under my chin, my father draws my face toward his own. He touches his lips to mine. I stiffen.I am frightened by The Kiss. I know it wrong, and its wrongness is what lets me know, too, that it is a secret.

Seeking Rapture

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOKIn this exquisite book of personal reflections on a woman’s life as a child, wife, and mother, Kathryn Harrison, a writer of extraordinary gifts Tobias Wolff, recalls episodes in her life, exploring how the experiences of childhood recur in memory, to be transformed and sometimes healed through the lives we lead as adults. At the heart of Seeking Rapture is the notion that a woman s journey is a continuous process of transformation, an ongoing transcendence and re creation of self.

Saint Therese of Lisieux

Saint Th r se of Lisieux, largely unknown when she died in a Carmelite convent at the age of twenty four, became through her posthumously published autobiography one of the world’s most influential religious figures. In Saint Th r se of Lisieux, bestselling novelist and memoirist Kathryn Harrison, whose depictions of women have been called ‘powerful’ The New York Times Book Review and ‘luminously intelligent’ The Boston Sunday Globe, brings to the saint’s life her storytelling gift and deep insight as she reveals the hopes and fears of the young girl behind the religious icon. Saint Th r se of Lisieux shows us the pampered daughter of successful and deeply religious tradespeople who through a personal appeal to the pope entered a convent at the early age of fifteen. There, Th r se embraced sacrifice and self renunciation in a single minded pursuit of the ‘nothingness’ she felt would bring her closer to God. With feeling, Harrison shows us the sensitive four year old whose mother’s death haunted her forever and contributed to the ascetic spirituality that strengthened her to embrace even the deadly throes of tuberculosis. Tellingly placed in the context of late nineteenth century French social and religious practices, this is a powerful story of a life lived with enormous passion and a searing, triumphant voyage of the spirit.

The Road to Santiago

In the spring of 1999, Kathryn Harrison set out to walk the centuries old pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela. ‘Not a vacation,’ she calls it, ‘but a time out of time.’ With a heavy pack, no hotel reservations, and little Spanish, she wanted an experience that would be both physically and psychically demanding. No pain, no gain, she thought, and she had some important things to contemplate. But the pilgrim road was spattered with violets and punctuated by medieval churches and alpine views, and, despite the exhaustion, aching knees, and brutal sun, she was unexpectedly flooded with joy and gratitude for life’s gifts. ‘Why do I like this road?’ she writes. ‘Why do I love it? What can be the comfort of understanding my footprint as just one among the millions? While I m walking I feel myself alive, feel my small life burning brightly.’

Throughout this deeply personal and revealing memoir of her journey, first made alone and later in the company of her daughter, Harrison blends striking images of the route and her fellow pilgrims with reflections on the redemptive power of pilgrimages, mortality, family, the nature of endurance, the past and future, the mystery of friendship.

The Road to Santiago is an exquisitely written, courageous, and irresistible portrait of a personal pilgrimage in search of a broader understanding of life and self.

The Mother Knot

In this dark gem of a book by the author of The Kiss, a complex mother daughter relationship precipitates a journey through depression to greater understanding, acceptance, freedom, and love,. Spare and unflinching, The Mother Knot is Kathryn Harrison’s courageous exploration of her painful feelings about her mother, and of her depression and recovery. Writer, wife, mother of three, Kathryn Harrison finds herself, at age forty one, wrestling with a black, untamable force that seems to have the power to undermine her sanity and her safety, a darkness that is tied to her relationship with her own mother, dead for many years but no less a haunting presence. Shaken by a family emergency that reveals the fragility of her current happiness, Harrison falls prey to despair and anxiety she believed she d overcome long before. A relapse of anorexia becomes the tangible reminder of a youth spent trying to achieve the perfection she had hoped would win her mother s love, and forces her to confront, understand, and ultimately cast out in startling physical form the demons within herself. Powerful, insightful, unforgettable, by a writer of extraordinary gifts Tobias Wolff, Kathryn Harrison s The Mother Knot is a knockout. From the Hardcover edition.

While They Slept

Early on an April morning, eighteen year old Billy Frank Gilley, Jr., killed his sleeping parents. Surprised in the act by his younger sister, Becky, he turned on her as well. Billy then climbed the stairs to the bedroom of his other sister, Jody, and said, We re free. But is one ever free after an unredeemable act of violence? The Gilley family murders ended a lifetime of physical and mental abuse suffered by Billy and Jody at the hands of their parents. And it required each of the two survivors one a convicted murderer, the other suddenly an orphan to create a new identity, a new life. In this mesmerizing book, bestselling writer Kathryn Harrison brilliantly uncovers the true story behind a shocking and unforgettable crime as she explores the impact of escalating violence and emotional abuse visited on the children of a deeply troubled family. With an artistry that recalls Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, Norman Mailer s The Executioner s Song, and her own The Kiss, Harrison reveals the antecedents of the murders of a crime of such violence that it had the power to sever past from present and the consequences for Billy and for Jody. Weaving in meditations on her own experience of parental abuse, Harrison searches out answers to the question of how survivors of violent trauma shape a future when their lives have been divided into Before and After. Based on interviews with Billy and Jody as well as with friends, police, and social workers involved in the case, While They Slept is Kathryn Harrison s unflinching inquiry into the dark heart of violence in an American family, and a personal quest to understand how young people go on after tragedy to examine the extent as well as the limits of psychic resilience. The New York Times called Kathryn Harrison s The Kiss a powerful piece of writing, a testament to evil and hope. The same could be said about While They Slept. PRAISE FOR While They Slept Harrison does a magnificent job of sorting through the heartbreak of a family tragedy. By adding insights into her own life, she brings us a little closer to understanding the resilience of the human spirit and the irrevocable damage and unforeseen consequences of child and sexual abuse. USA Today The result of Harrison’s masterful embellishment is a fascinating and comprehensive examination of the before and after of a brutal triple murder, of the cyclical nature of violence and of the tragic ineffectiveness of our social support systems While They Slept does not provide the easy answers we hope to discover in just the facts, but it offers instead the richer and more enduring illumination of the story. L.A. Times Her telling brings moral clarity to the dark fate of a family: the daylight gaze of narrative itself as a form of empathy. New York Times Book Review, cover review A powerful account This excellent book will be devoured by educators who try to come to grips with the lasting effects of the traumas of childhood. Deseret Morning News Harrison offers careful research and obvious concern While They Slept s real horror is in how many potential helpers were aware of the abuse and were unable to help. This is a heartbreaking read. Rocky Mountain News Kathryn Harrison pulls the reader through the story of the 1984 triple murder in Medford our own backyard with such speed and excitement it feels like you re watching an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent Harrison perfectly paces the revelations of new characters, who add critical information and perspective to the Gilley murder. Willamette Weekly

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