First published in 1997, the memoir details her relationship with her estranged father, which culminated in a sexual affair when they finally met again when she was an adult.

Despite the fact that her father remarries and has children with his new wife and her mother has relationships with other men, Harrison suspects they continue to have an infrequent sexual affair during this time.

While Harrison repeatedly resists, she eventually acquiesces although she begins to black out as a means of coping with the sex.

[3] In The New York Times Book Review, Susan Cheever wrote, "The story of an intellectually powerful man and his consuming desire to ravish an innocent, almost preconscious, young woman (sometimes his daughter) has often been told—Zeus, Lewis Carroll and Humbert Humbert come to mind—but Kathryn Harrison turns up the volume, making this ancient immorality tale a struggle between good and evil, between life and death, between God and the Devil.

"[4] In The New York Times critic Christopher Lehmann-Haupt called the memoir "appalling but beautifully written.

He called it "the oddest piece of kitsch" with "airbrushed" sentences that "leave wistful little vapor trails of Valium."

"[6] Writing in The Washington Post, Jonathan Yardley called The Kiss "slimy, repellent, meretricious, cynical.

"[10] After Michael Shnayerson published a critical account of the book in Vanity Fair, The New Yorker canceled an excerpt that it had scheduled.

[11] In The Art of Memoir, Mary Karr dedicated a chapter, "The Public and Private Burning of Kathryn Harrison" to discussing The Kiss controversy.