In This Dark House: A Memoir [Hardcover]

Louise Kehoe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 10, 1995

The youngest daughter of avant-garde architect Berthold Lubetkin recounts her life on the family's desolate southern England farm, describing Lubetkin's fiercely Communist beliefs and the tyrannical hold he kept on his children. 20,000 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 1940, Kehoe's father, Berthold Lubetkin, a renowned Russian-born architect, abruptly abandoned his London career and retreated with his wife and three children to a remote farm in southwestern England called World's End. In this riveting memoir, Kehoe, a journalist in Massachusetts, describes the nightmare world she, her older sister and her younger brother inhabited as children. Cut off from the rest of the world, they were at the mercy of an abusive and tyrannical father who forbade them to come into contact with other children and mercilessly undermined any abilities they possessed or opinions they expressed. Although Kehoe's mother loved her children, she adored her husband and appeased him at their expense. A militant communist and atheist, Lubetkin forced his views on his family, which further alienated Kehoe from her schoolmates. After his death she discovered that her father had concealed his Jewish ancestry from everyone but his wife (who was a Christian) and was haunted by the deaths of his parents during the Holocaust. Kehoe is now a practicing Jew. An extraordinary, well-told story of a brutal childhood.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Eloquently written and a pleasure to read, this profile of a dysfunctional family offers more than the typical sturm und drang. Instead of simply plumbing her scarred psyche, the author seeks to understand why her sophisticated architect-turned-farmer father wielded tyrannical control over his family. Kehoe opens by describing her childhood in idyllic rural England, where her world-class architect father abruptly had relocated his family at the outbreak of World War II. The unfolding narrative reads like a mystery, with appropriately surprising results. The father's concealment of his Jewish ancestry and abandonment of his own parents to be murdered by the Nazis were secrets not discovered until after his death, secrets that have transformed Kehoe's life. Recommended for larger popular biography collections.?A. Arro Smith, San Marcos P.L., Tex.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 232 pages
• Publisher: Schocken Books; First Edition edition (October 10, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805241221
• ISBN-13: 978-0805241228
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,997,623 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Many disturbing questions remain., March 28, 2000

By 

amrdmr "amrdmr" - See all my reviews

This review is from: In This Dark House: A Memoir (Paperback)

Why did no reviewer mention one of the most shocking, pivotal moments in this book? That in 1966, a 17-year-old English girl named Lubetkin, while visiting a friend in Bavaria, was treated by a German doctor for an accident to her hand - and because he suspected that she was a Jew, he chose to inject the tetanus shot into both her nipples (which later abcessed and broke open)! In 1966! Aside from the story of her father's madness (grief-driven insanity is certainly what his behavior seemed to be), looms another question - how could this sort of sadistic torture have been allowed to pass unmentioned by any other observer and to go unpunished in 1966? And in 2000?

The incident with the Nazi doctor and her parents seeming indifference to it finally lead the teenaged Ms. Kehoe to the realization that she had worth as a person and gave her the strength to break away from her father's "dark house". Unearthing the truth of her father's past buried in literally mountains of lies that comprised the deliberate, sly "shell game" Berthold Lubetkin inflicted on his wife and children is a testimony to the driving force of a tortured child's search for understanding to regain sanity from madness.

These afternoon not quite four years after Dad's death, I appeared before a rabbinical court in Boston and, having satisfied the three presiding rabbis that I knew exactly what I was letting myself in for, was formally pronounced a Jew."

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully detailed and beautifully-written, May 10, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: In This Dark House: A Memoir (Paperback)

From the opening papragraph of description of the physical geography through the more difficult terrain of the interior geography of family and self, this book is an honest and eloquent account of growing up and going on, of the power of lies and the power of truth, and finally of acceptance and forgiveness. A finely detailed portrait of a damaged and damaging man, and of the author's road of transcendence and re-connection with her true heritage

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why Is This Book Out Of Print?, September 12, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: In This Dark House: A Memoir (Paperback)

This is a quirky, memorable story - the author is a brilliant writer. Many people have enjoyed this book, so why is it out of print? That really bugs me about the publishing world - how can they allow such great work to fall between the cracks, when real crap - and I mean crap - gets published. This book is a classic. It needs to be available in bookstores everywhere.