Dark Harbor: Building House and Home on an Enchanted Island [Hardcover]

Ved Mehta (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2003

When Ved Mehta was invited to Islesboro, a thirteen-mile-long island off the coast of Maine, he could not have imagined the far-reaching consequences of his visit. Seduced by the dream of setting roots in the New World, Mehta finds himself buying a fifteen-acre parcel of land in the rugged terrain of Dark Harbor. To build his house, he hires the architect Edward Larrabee Barnes, famous for designing, among other things, the IBM Building in New York. With echoes of Ibsen's Master-builder, Mehta details the folly of a blind man constructing a house on an island far removed from that other island, Manhattan, where he lives. Underlying this narrative is a richly allegorical tale about Mehta's own struggles as a writer and as a man. In the middle of it all, he falls in love with a much younger woman, whom he ultimately marries.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the 10th and penultimate installment of his Continents of Exile autobiographical series, Mehta (All for Love; Up at Oxford) deftly turns homebuilding into a metaphor for other struggles. Seeking acceptance, love, a home and a family, he evokes their universal nature alongside the unique challenges of his blindness, which render his achievements particularly poignant. "I was glad that I was in a position to give my wife and children some measure of what a sighted husband and a sighted father might give," he writes near the end of this volume, with his island home built and his daughters happily installed in sailing camp. The story begins, though, with the author as a single urbanite living on a writer's meager income, awed by wealthy friends who vacation on Maine's island of Islesboro. While Mehta, a 30-year New Yorker veteran, bristles when people cater to his blindness, the book shows how his condition makes his project breathtakingly difficult. While he is adept at navigating Manhattan, with its myriad sounds, the forested island, accessible only by boat or plane, defies him from the moment a pilot leaves him alone on the airstrip and he briefly panics. Mehta's conversation with himself at this moment captures his social anxiety and the recklessness with which he overcomes it, themes that run throughout the book. "I shouldn't have let him fly away just for the sake of giving Annette [Mehta's friend] the impression that I was every bit the equal of a seeing person," he tells himself. His candid self-observation and clear, clean prose make for an engaging read. Photos.-- the impression that I was every bit the equal of a seeing person," he tells himself. His candid self-observation and clear, clean prose make for an engaging read. Photos.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Mehta, a longtime New Yorker contributor and exceptional memoirist, adds yet another captivating volume to his unparalleled Continents of Exile series, which chronicles his boyhood loss of sight and efforts to live and to write as much in the manner of the sighted as possible. In this installment, he recounts his adventure building a house he never felt he could afford on a small Maine island he could not navigate on his own. In spite of these obstacles, Mehta, then in his forties and unmarried, fell in love with the tiny, wooded, isolated island of Islesboro with its poetically and aptly named town, Dark Harbor, and retained renowned architect Edward Larrabee Barnes to build him a house. As Mehta chronicles with poignant and often hilarious detail his improbable and oddly courageous undertaking, he muses over his determination to transcend his disability, and parallels the construction of his house with the evolution of his marriage and realization of the sweet dream of a safe harbor in which to ride out life's chaos. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Nation Books (May 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560255285
• ISBN-13: 978-1560255284
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,621,038 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Dark Harbor" filled with insight and wit, August 27, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Dark Harbor: Building House and Home on an Enchanted Island (Hardcover)

I'm not sure what the reviewer from Marblehead's beef with Mehta's book is. It seems unfair to knock "Dark Harbor" just because it doesn't portray the stereotypical "Down East" Maine preciousness he or she holds as inviolate.

In fact, to think Mehta's book is or should be solely about rocky beaches and pine trees and lobster boats is missing the larger and much more subtle and poignant points this memoir seeks to make. I found it fascinating to read Mehta's account of building a dream home in spite of his blindness. Think of the central ironies at play here--a blind man obsessed with visual and spatial architectural details he cannot detect or enjoy the same way sighted people can, and yet driven to build a state-of-the-art home for the enjoyment of those around him. It is at once an act of tremendous generosity, considerable hubris, and deep-seated insecurity and sensitivity to the opinion and approval of others.

Mehta is not the first writer to describe his descent into a house-building money pit, but he is no doubt the first to describe the experience from this unique perspective. This material is rich with psychological complexity, as well as humor and wit, and Mehta invites us along on his bricks-and-mortar journey of self-discovery. If that trip takes us from Islesboro to Manhattan to his ancestral home in India, or from the isolation of his blindess to the social swirl of New York literati and high society, so much the better. Those intertwining worlds (the "Continents of Exile" after which he named his autobiographical series) only make for more fascinating reading. And his clear and lucid prose style--an elegant, charmingly antiquated type of writing one rarely finds published anymore--enhances the experience. There is much to enjoy and savor in this book.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the man is interesting, not the house, October 17, 2003

By 

holly moors (haren gn, gn Netherlands) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Dark Harbor: Building House and Home on an Enchanted Island (Hardcover)

Forget the other Great Autobiographies like Paustowsky and Proust. Ved Mehta and his Continents of exile is far better then anything in this field of writing. In very elegant, humorous English he gives you the story of his life, and the angle differs a bit each time. That counts for the disappointed readers that expect a book about The New Yorker or A House On A Maine Island. What you get is the fascinating story of a blind Indian man that grew up in India, came to America, went to England and back to America, and combines all these influences and continents with humor and an intelligent attitude.
A great series and another great book.

4.0 out of 5 stars Travails and Tantrums of Building a (blind man's) House, March 14, 2004

By 

Ravindra Okade (MD, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dark Harbor: Building House and Home on an Enchanted Island (Hardcover)

Why should you read a book about building a house? Aren't millions of them built in the US every year? What's special about them?

Well, the author (who is building the house) is blind for one. Add to it the fact that, he couldn't afford it when he started building. And then he was building it on a remote island in Maine. If you thought that this is a recipe for disaster, you are correct. But he seems to persevere through the whole thing and builds a fabulous house in the end.

Two of the reviewers (I couldn't help notice both are from New England) seem to think that the book is about the beauty of Maine. And therefore conclude that the book is not a good book. So what is the book about? .. it is about a blind mans life, his aspirations and desperations; about how a house project always costs much more than is budgeted; about how a house is a never ending project; about architecture; and of course about the beauty of an island in Maine (but not just that).

All in all a very interesting read.