In This Dark House: A Memoir

In This Dark House: A Memoir
by Louise Kehoe

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Book Summary Information

Author: Louise Kehoe
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-08
ISBN: 0805210172
Number of pages: 240
Publisher: Schocken

Book Reviews of In This Dark House: A Memoir

Book Review: Well-written, insightful
Summary: 4 Stars

It would be a mistake to recommend this memoir only to readers interested in the Holocaust. While the writer's Jewish heritage does come to play in the latter half of the book, it's dominated by her narcissitic, demanding father. In fact, it's almost more of his memoir than hers. Louise Kehoe writes very well but keeps certain amount of distance, a quality that makes it difficult for readers to feel too close to her childhood self. Even as she describes a childhood of incredible emotional abuse, she isn't able (or chooses not to?) quite make them come alive.

In the end, Kehoe dismisses her father's transgressions as soon as she discovers his own broken history. This attitude seemed strange to me. Was her childhood suffering so easily forgotten? What about her father's rejection of his own Jewish heritage? Even as a non-jewish reader, I was deeply offended by his actions and found her dismissal of them unnerving. Whatever conclusion you come to, this book no doubt raises questions about how people choose and experience their identity--not only Jewish/religious, but also national, ethical, political, and moral.

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Summary of In This Dark House: A Memoir

In 1939 the influential architect Berthold Lubetkin abruptly left his thriving career in London and dropped out of sight, moving with his wife to a desolate farm in rural Gloucestershire. Life in the house the Lubetkins named ?World?s End? was far from idyllic for their three children. Louise Kehoe and her siblings lived in an atmosphere of oppressive isolation, while their tyrannical father?at times charming and witty but usually a terrorist in a
self-styled Stalinist hell?badgered and belittled them during his fits of self-loathing. Even his true identity remained an enigma. That secret was never divulged during her father?s lifetime, but Louise?s quest to unearth its tragic origins?her relentless piecing together of the clues she found after his death?is a remarkable story, written with extraordinary grace, style, and imagination, of an identity and a heritage lost and found.

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