Kathryn Harrison

During the World War I years, a man named Bigelow is stationed in Anchorage, Alaska, to observe weather phenomena for the government--air currents, barometric changes, etc. Isolated and lonely, he begins an affair with an Aleut woman who never speaks, and with whom he becomes obsessed. Suddenly, she disappears, devastating him--but Bigelow eventually recovers and makes a new life for himself. Then the Aleut woman returns. A New York Times Notable Book for 2002.

Muchos son los peregrinos devotos -y no tan devotos- que recorren este bellísimo y a veces abrupto paisaje hasta el sepulcro del apóstol Santiago en Santiago de Compostela. Es un camino difícil, arduo a veces, y no siempre seguro para una mujer sola.Kathryn Harrison vuelve por tercera vez al camino, pero en esta ocasion acompañada por su hija de doce años. Y ahora ve con otro ojos, los de Sara. Es la suya una expedicion extraordinaria que discurre a un ritmo casi olvidado en nuestro mundo moderno. El camino de Santiago esta plagado de reflexiones sobre el amor y la familia, sobre la vida y la muerte, sobre la naturaleza humana y el deseo de salvacion que con tanta fuerza simboliza el peregrinaje; y nos descubre, ademas, la inestimable posibilidad de encontrarnos a nosotros.

En la China de principios del siglo XX, Mai es sometida al doloroso ritual de vender los pies a las niñas. Después de huir de un matrimonio concertado, es rescatada de un burdel de Shangai por Arthur Cohen, un australiano que lucha por la abolicion de la brutal practica que acabara secretamente seducido por sus pequeños pies.

In 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.

Bigelow tiene veintiséis años y una obsesión: la metereología. Es 1915, y la posibilidad de que Estados Unidos entre por fin en la guerra que ha acelerado la construcción de un ferrocarril para transportar el carbon y los diamantes de Alaska. Pero el ritmo de los trabajos dependera de una acertada prevision del tiempo, y Bigelow, equipado solamente con sus escasos instrumentos cientificos, un gramofono y las ropas menos adecuadas para su destino,parte hacia la helada ciudad de Anchorage, la frontera de "la muerte de la civilizacion, la muerte de la razon". Nada lo ha preparado para la soledad de esa ciudad con mas de dos mil hombres y solo un puñado de mujeres Y nada lo ha preparado para su encuentro con la solitaria aleutiana, descendiente de los antiguos pobladores de la peninsula. Bigelow la sigue un dia hasta su casa, y alli comienza una extraña relacion. Ella nunca habla, y el no conoce ni su nombre ni su historia. Tal vez porque todo loque ella quiere decir lo expresa con su cuerpo, con su sexo. Y Bigelow, ahora, tendra dos obsesiones: la meteorologia y la mujer de nieve...

Una inquietante y perturbadora novela que ahonda en los recónditos secretos del deseo, la rebeldía femenina contra la dominación patriarcal, la perversión y el gozo. Belleza y dolor. Erotismo y crueldad. Son los polos opuestos de la practica de la China tradicional consistente en vendar los pies de las niñas para que no creciesen y asi convertirlos en objeto de deseo. Una costumbre que el gobierno prohibio en 1911; demasiado tarde para la joven Mai, que es sometida al doloroso ritual. Pero su rebeldia la impulsa a huir de un matrimonio concertado en la China rural e instalarse en Shangai, donde trabaja en un burdel hasta que es rescatada por Arthur Cohen, un filantropo australiano que lucha por la abolicion de la brutal practica de vendar los pies, pero que acabara secretamente seducido por los pequeños pies de Mai.Arthur se casa con ella y se la lleva a vivir a Europa con la familia de su hermana y Mai se siente muy unida a su sobrina Alice, pero la familia, que teme a esa hermosa, enigmatica y destructiva mujer china de espiritu libre que fuma opio, hara todo lo posible por separarlas...Despues de su polemica incursion en los abismos del incesto con El beso, Harrison ahonda en esta novela inquietante y perturbadora en los reconditos secretos del deseo, la rebeldia femenina contra la dominacion patriarcal, la perversion y el gozo. Una intensa historia que arrastra al lector desde la decimononica China rural a la Costa Azul de los años locos, pasando por el exotico Shangai de principios del siglo XX.

Isabel is the troubled daughter of charismatic but reckless parents who hastily wed, divorced just as fast, and distanced themselves from each otherand 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 Freuds family romance, Thicker Than Water vividly illuminates the fragile line between love and the darker sides of passion.

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 scientists 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 obsessionobsession 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 emotionsa human landscape that, in its splendor and terror, is profoundly and eerily reminiscent of the frozen frontier and the storms that scour its face.

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 hoards the memory of her adored lost mother like an amulet. Francicas 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 Harrisons POISON vividlyreminds us of the persistence of desire, the passion that exists between mothers and daughters, and the sorcery of dreams.

Saint Thérèse 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 worlds most influential re

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOKPart love story, part history, this novel is a tour de force [told] in language that soars and sears.More St. Petersburg, 1917. After Rasputins body is pulled from the icy waters of the Neva River, his eighteen-year-old daughter, Masha, is sent to live at the imperial palace with Tsar Nikolay and his family. Desperately hoping that Masha has inherited Rasputins healing powers, Tsarina Alexandra asks her to tend to her son, the headstrong prince Alyosha, who suffers from hemophilia. Soon after Masha arrives at the palace, the tsar is forced to abdicate, and the Bolsheviks place the royal family under house arrest. As Russia descends into civil war, Masha and Alyosha find solace in each others company. To escape the confinement of the palace, and to distract the prince from the pain she cannot heal, Masha tells him storiessome embellished and others entirely imaginedabout Nikolay and Alexandras courtship, Rasputins exploits, and their wild and wonderful country, now on the brink of an irrevocable transformation. In the worlds of their imagination, the weak become strong, legend becomes fact, and a future that will never come to pass feels close at hand. Praise for EnchantmentsA sumptuous, atmospheric account of the last days of the Romanovs from the perspective of Rasputins daughter, [told] with the sensuous, transporting prose that is Kathryn Harrisons trademark.Jennifer Egan [A] splendid and surprising book . . . Harrison has given us something enduring.The New York Times Book Review [Harrison delivers] this oft-told moment with shocking freshness. . . . Masha re-invents our ideas of Rasputin, and the world of Nicholas and Alexandra is imbued with a glow whose fierceness is governed by the imminence of its loss.Los Angeles Times A mesmerizing novel.O: The Oprah Magazine Bewitching . . . Harrison sets historic facts like jewels in this intricately fashioned work of exalted empathy and imagination, a literary Faberge egg. . . . [A] dazzling return to historical fiction.Booklist (starred review)Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Readers Circle for author chats and more.

Luminous and affecting . . . [Exposure] examines the often fine line between art and abuse. . . . Taut in plot, beautifully realistic, and intelligently disturbing.Harpers 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 easilyimages of a childhood spent as her fathers 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 fathers 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.CosmopolitanImpossible to put down . . . Kathryn Harrison is an extremely gifted writer, poetic, passionate, and elegant.San Francisco ChronicleExquisite, exhilarating, and harrowing.Donna Tartt, author of The Secret History and The Little FriendA breathless urban nightmare not easy to forget. Stark, brilliant, and original work.Kirkus Reviews (starred review)