- Paperback: 240 pages
- Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks; Reprint edition (July 11 2006)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0812973593
- ISBN-13: 978-0812973594
- Product Dimensions: 13 x 1.5 x 20.1 cm
- Shipping Weight: 181 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #668,335 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Harrison's second novel (after Thicker Than Water ) is a mesmerizing depiction of a woman on the edge of emotional disintegration. Ann Rogers is a beautiful, chic, financially comfortable New Yorker with a career as a videographer of weddings and society functions, and a loving husband who restores landmark buildings. But Ann is addicted to speed, a drug which holds especially dangerous consequences for her, since she is a diabetic. Moreover, every time she does crystal meth, she compulsively shoplifts at Bergdorf's and Saks. Flashing back to Ann's Texas upbringing, Harrison gradually discloses the source of her deep neuroses. Her cold, monstrously selfish father extracted a bizarre kind of vengeance for her mother's death in childbirth. Edgar Rogers became famous for his photographs of a prepubescent and adolescent Ann, naked and assuming deathly poses. He committed suicide in 1979; now a retrospective of his work, including photos of Ann engaged in acts the memory of which she has tried to repress, is imminent at the MoMA. Demonstrating impressive control of the novel's structure and pacing, Harrison steadily deepens her sophisticated psychological portrait of Ann while elevating suspense and the reader's emotional involvement. The shocking circumstances of Ann's life become clear: she survived traumatic events by pathologically retreating into herself, but her subconscious erupts now and then in suicidal behavior. This unsparing picture of a woman spinning out of control is conveyed in luminous and tensile prose. The novel's larger theme, an indictment of a society "which encourages exploitation even as it punishes all who chronicle it," is eerily prescient, calling to mind the current controversy over photographer Sally Mann's nude pictures of her children. Harrowing but spellbinding, the novel has the impact of an unforgettably vivid image seared on the eye. BOMC featured alternate.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Library Journal
Ann Rogers seems successful--she's happily married and a partner in a thriving videography business--but she's also a diabetic hooked on speed and a compulsive shoplifter at some of New York's best stores. While she skillfully videotapes and edits other people's celebrations and turns them into happy memories, she is unable to face her own past. Her life spins farther out of control at the approach of a retrospective show at the Museum of Modern Art of the work of her father, a noted photographer whose model was prepubescent Ann, posed as if dead or caught in sexually explicit situations. Harrison ( Thicker Than Water, LJ 3/15/91) is a remarkable storyteller with a clear, strong voice; she hooks the reader right from the start (as Ann tugs on a stolen skirt in a taxi) and shows, finally, that we are all products of our history. Compelling. BOMC featured alternate; previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/1/91.
- Michele Leber, Fairfax Cty. P.L., Va.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
- Michele Leber, Fairfax Cty. P.L., Va.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Under Bright-Lights A Secret Lies,
By A Customer
This review is from: Exposure (Paperback)
What drew me to this book the most was its cover. As interesting as the plot-line seemed, I think the cover was incredibly well-done. The woman has this blunt, wistful stare and yet seems so carefully posed as to be unexposed. She is veiled in that we cannot see anything (her clothes, hair, body) except her face. Because of the cover, I was really excited about this book, and my expectations were met... somewhat.Ann Rogers appears to have it all: beautiful, successful photographer, married. She seems to have everything under-control. Yet secretly her life is in shambles as a museum sets up an exhibit of her father's sexually explicit, masochistic, disturbing, and very, very controversial photographs, for which Ann was his model. Ostensibly, Ann is fine with the exhibit, and as controller of his estate (her father committed suicide when she was nineteen) she even participates in it. However, she has also turned to crystal-meth and compulsive shop-lifting as a buttress, and mismanagement of her severe diabetes as an escape. Overall, this book was pretty good, not overly exploitative, and well-written. It was very dramatic I really liked the inserts which described the photographs of Ann as a girl. While some reviewers complained that it wasn't fair of the author to give us an anonymous nineteen year-old protestor of the exhibit who sets herself on fire, I felt the anonymity worked in that it embodies the destructive impulses Ann's father's work led to in Ann herself, and shows the way people can have an effect on us without our knowing it. At the same time, I felt this book could have been better had it been narrated by Ann's point-of-view. I couldn't really tell what she was feeling and this put me at a distance from her as the central character. The inserts that were narrated by Ann seemed too dramatic, italicized and supposing to be passioonate, while they really revealed very little at all. I wish I could have gotten more of a feel for how Ann felt about her fame as a model, and perhaps the feelings of humiliation at being so exposed so young. I also didn't like the conclusion. We have no idea where the story is going and what is happening to Ann. The connection with charity work was a poor one. On the whole though, I admire Kathryn Harrison for attempting to tell a story of what amounts to incest when it is not blatantly so, therefore leaving the victim in dire confusion, with only a desire to self-destruct. At times this may seem like another "beautiful-talented-destructive-young-woman tale", but you can't blame Ann after what she's been through.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful read,
By
This review is from: Exposure (Paperback)
The reader gets the feeling this author is speaking perhaps too close for comfort. Self destructing woman becomes even more unglued as her famous father's photographs are heading for display at a museum. Her father's camera was his shield against feeling while the daughter was the recipient of only the camera's eye. Psychologists would have a field day with this character. Riveting story.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Where Was Her Editor?,
By C.Allison (Santa Monica, CA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Exposure (Paperback)
Kathryn Harrison is a lovely, compelling writer but someone should have helped her with this one. Plot points intriguingly dropped are never addressed again (a mysterious self-imolating nineteen year old girl is dangled in front of us, then abandoned; the protagonist's father has an affair with a highly unlikely woman for whom there is never an explanation). In addition, the self destructive 'heroine' herself is a frustration. Watching her downward spiral is wearing, she never comes to the slightest bit of self-knowledge and we are left with no hope for her or her marriage to her faithful, eminently more sympathetic husband. Yes, it's interesting to note that our culture is hyper-obsessed with voyeurism, that lives are sacrificed in the process and no one seems to care. But by the end, I was close to not caring myself, which I'm sure was not Ms. Harrison's intention. She's a very talented writer, and I read the first half with alacrity, sure there would be some break in the endless self-destruction that would make slogging through it worthwhile. For some, perhaps watching a train wreck is fascination enough in itself. As for myself, I wanted more.
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