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Exposure
In luminous, provocative prose, Kathryn Harrison tells the harrowing story of a woman poised on the edge of a psychological nightmare. As a child, Ann was her photographer father's muse, and his controversial photographs of her shocked the world. Now, years later, a museum retrospective causes her controlled existence to unravel.
Paperback, 258 pages
Published
by Warner Books
(first published January 1st 1993)
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With hindsight--the cue from Kathryn Harrison's memoir "Kiss" published a few years after "Exposure"--it is clear why a father-daughter's relationship is a central theme in her writing.
"Exposure" is written in beautiful lyrical prose that has immediacy and intimacy as the story explores the inner world of Ann Rogers. When the younger Ann served as her father's photography model, she had to keep her pose still for hours on end. She sacrificed play and study time normal children would have in ord...more
"Exposure" is written in beautiful lyrical prose that has immediacy and intimacy as the story explores the inner world of Ann Rogers. When the younger Ann served as her father's photography model, she had to keep her pose still for hours on end. She sacrificed play and study time normal children would have in ord...more
Long before Kathryn Harrison published her memoir about her affair with her father (The Kiss), she wrote Exposure, a story in which there is another very strange, almost incestuous, relationship between a girl and her father.
::: The View :::
Harrison's introduction to the world of Ann Rogers is riveting, and draws the reader immediately in. Ann is on her way to an event she is supposed to videotape for her business, and is changing in a cab into an outfit that she has just shoplifted. We soon lea...more
::: The View :::
Harrison's introduction to the world of Ann Rogers is riveting, and draws the reader immediately in. Ann is on her way to an event she is supposed to videotape for her business, and is changing in a cab into an outfit that she has just shoplifted. We soon lea...more
Harrison's writing style is descriptive, entertaining and easy to read. I always find myself wishing for some darkly despairing bit of truth, which I've been led to believe her writing contains but have never actually felt. I'm left with a "yeah, and?" sort of feeling, but not one strong enough to wish for more from her.
A good read, this novel. Exposure tells the story of the daughter of a noted photographer, taking her from early childhood as Daddy's model, to life after Father has died, and on into her own career as a videographer doing the wedding circuit. Ann Rogers is a mess as humans go. Secrets and undiscovered sins feed the woman's behaviour--including an addiction to meth, strong kleptomaniac tendencies, and strange actions that are cringe-worthy at times. We get to the bottom of her dysfunction, but t...more
I learned that just because a book makes it on a list of best sellers (NY Times, Kindle, etc) it is not good. Dialogue and scene descriptions I felt were sophomoric. That causes the reader to skim looking only for plot line stuff. The overall plot was good: Two crime-like stories are told (1 or 2 chapters for one, then back to the other, etc). Not until about 75% through the book are the stories connected. The heart of the story is a $6 million bank heist. Throw in a woman scared of her own shad...more
"Pedestrians look up and then away. Caught in the observance of some indiscretion, they display that particular politeness of humans forced into uncomfortable proximity to a stranger's passions; either that, or they simply don't care." (193)
"I am so very tired sometimes of trying. I'm trying all the time, I don't know how to do anything else. It looks like I'm breezing through, it looks like I couldn't care less, it looks that way because I intend for it to look that way. And that person, the on...more
"I am so very tired sometimes of trying. I'm trying all the time, I don't know how to do anything else. It looks like I'm breezing through, it looks like I couldn't care less, it looks that way because I intend for it to look that way. And that person, the on...more
There was a kind of woman who was very fashionable throughout the nineties - intellectual, talented, beautiful, damaged in some vague and unspoken way. These women made a performance of their damage and of their self-destruction and took us all along for the ride. Kathryn Harrison, with her memoir of incest with her father The Kiss was certainly one of them. I think also of Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation) and to a certain extent Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madn...more
This was assigned reading for my visual anthropology class freshman year of college. It was better than I expected, because I wasn't sold on the class. The idea of looking and seeing through observing photographs and being photographed made this a somewhat worthwhile read, although it's hardly a book I'd want to read again.
I love the honesty in Harrison's writing. I actually felt everything the character was feeling, I "got" her on a deep level. At the end, I found myself wishing for a sequel, to find out more of what happened next. But then I'm a sucker for disturbing stories that make you feel slightly squickie. This is an excellent study in psychology and how one's childhood continues to affect one as an adult.
Something about this book compels me to read it again every so often. The self-destructive main character draws me in, and I like Harrison's descriptions of the photography. Disturbing but engrossing --- it never takes me long to get through the book, but every time through, I enjoy it.
I would have given this book 4 stars because I really, really liked it but the ending was very disappointing! I feel like the ending still has not happened...I was left not knowing what the ending was.
one of many books in my library originally picked up literally for its cover, exposure turns out to be quite a satisfying erotic thriller as well, plus an interesting meditation on fame, sex, and the limits of voyeurism. the story of a famed controversial photographer who made a career out of compromising images of his daughter, the book mostly takes place with the daughter now a grown-up kleptomaniac and sexual deviant, dealing with an upcoming retrospective of her father's work that threatens...more
Nov 29, 2011
Rebekkila
marked it as to-read
I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/10305491
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/10305491
I like to read books that get my emotions stirred up. This one definitely did. Definitely recommended.
Feel like i've read it before or know the story of this woman
ann who is a famously photographed by father
ann who is a famously photographed by father
Beautifully written novel. A disturbing story you won't soon forget.
Boo the critical acclaims. It wasted my time
Feb 21, 2010
Alex
added it
Exposure by Kathryn Harrison (1994)
I can't get enough of Kathryn Harrison.
Riveting, wonderful.
One of my favorites
I went through this moment with Ms Harrison I guess. I still want to read the true crime novel that just came out... As with the other two I read of hers, this one had a great skeleton but very little substance. I *really* wanted there to be be more to this one. I guess I'll have to write the damn book.
Oh, yes. It is about a woman coping with a retrospective of her father's photographs, most of which are of her nude during pre-adolescence. Terrific set up without delivery.
Oh, yes. It is about a woman coping with a retrospective of her father's photographs, most of which are of her nude during pre-adolescence. Terrific set up without delivery.
It's The Kiss, only with the narrator made into more of a victim (wishful thinking?) and about ten years younger.
This was my third Kathryn Harrison book, and my last. Again with the haunting lyrical prose. Again with the themes of power and powerlessness, and gentle cruelty and desire and submission. Again with the semi-autobiographical stance that makes you wonder, with an inner sense of "ick." After a few hundred pages, all of Harrison's ideas start to sound the same.
This was my third Kathryn Harrison book, and my last. Again with the haunting lyrical prose. Again with the themes of power and powerlessness, and gentle cruelty and desire and submission. Again with the semi-autobiographical stance that makes you wonder, with an inner sense of "ick." After a few hundred pages, all of Harrison's ideas start to sound the same.
Excellent psychological drama about the daughter and childhood model of a famous art photographer whose life is coming apart at the seams in the weeks leading up to a major retrospective of her late father's exploitative work. I cannot recommend this book enough.
this book had all the elements of a nice-enough literary work, but it's topic (child soft pornography and it's effect on the model when she comes of age) is a bit uncomfortable at best, perverse at worst. you could stage a culture war around this book over whether this book is art or pornography.
if you love this book, you'll love 'the unbearable lightness of being.' and if you loved both those movies, you probably need counseling.
if you love this book, you'll love 'the unbearable lightness of being.' and if you loved both those movies, you probably need counseling.
Though some of the prose was lovely I was a little disappointed in this. I thought Ann's self-discovery was a little bit too little, too late. I though Ann's husband Carl was very well-drawn and perhaps too indugent. The editor needed to be more alert - geographical and mathematical errors drive me crazy.
I read this book shortly after it came out and, obviously, before Harrison wrote The Kiss, the memoir in which she details the incestuous relationship she had with her father as a young woman. Let's just say when that book came out, a lot of stuff from this book clicked into place very neatly.
You just have to read her work. You feel one with the protagonist who is diabetic and I think addicted to Cocaine. She's also a photographer for weddings, but aspires to greatness. Only her dreams fall short once perverse photographs of her are revealed at a big opening.
I liked it -- found it very powerful and a good example of how things that happen in our childhood effect us all our lives. Though, thankfully, this is fiction, I don't think it's too far from some of the truths children live every day.
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Kathryn Harrison is the author of the novels Envy, The Seal Wife, The Binding Chair, Poison, Exposure, and Thicker Than Water.
She has also written memoirs, The Kiss and The Mother Knot, a travel memoir, The Road To Santiago, a biography, Saint Therese Of Lisieux, and a collection of personal essays, Seeking Rapture.
Ms. Harrison is a frequent reviewer for The New York Times Book Review; her essay...more
More about Kathryn Harrison...
She has also written memoirs, The Kiss and The Mother Knot, a travel memoir, The Road To Santiago, a biography, Saint Therese Of Lisieux, and a collection of personal essays, Seeking Rapture.
Ms. Harrison is a frequent reviewer for The New York Times Book Review; her essay...more
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Sep 19, 2011 03:35pm