Customer Reviews

In This Dark House: A Memoir

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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."

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

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.

Louise Kehoe is one of the bravest writers I have never met (although we did have plenty of phone conversations back when she was getting this book through production!) On the face of it, it's another coming of age book; but when you consider her history at the hands of her tortured and conscience-stricken father, and how the consequences of his grief cast a long shadow over the lives of his children...Kehoe masterfully organizes events, emotions, and personalities, and the result is an elegant, elegaic jewel of a book.

There is ugliness; abuse at the hands of a German doctor; emotional abuse heaped upon Louise and her siblings, lies cafefully constructed by her father and executed by her otherwise forthright mother, the untimely death of her older brother, and her harrowing experience with anorexia nervosa.

I wish Kehoe had published more; she is a truly astonishing writer.

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.

Kehoe's memoir of growing up in rural England is a sad and dark one. Throughout her childhood Kehoe was subjected to the whims and abuse of her eccentric and tyrannical father. A gifted architect, Kehoe's father ruled his children and his wife like a dictator. Isolated and miserable, Kehoe has no explanation for her father's behavior. As an adult, she decides to investigate her family's past, to try and better understand her father. Spurred on by an episode of anti-Semitic violence in her youth, Kehoe's search for her past leads her to unexpected places and surprises. It's difficult to say more without giving away the conclusion, except that this memoir explains Kehoe's search for her past, and how she comes to terms with what she finds and what she knows of her father. Well-written, sad, and sometimes shocking, Kehoe's rendering of an elaborate family myth and its unraveling is well-crafted.

Splendid period remembrance (post wwII england) of a tyranical father. But one thing nags me. Why does the author assume that her mother was privy to the father's hidden past. Isn't it a more likely scenario that the mother too was ultimately duped by the father

This book is not for everyone. I have tried to pass it on and most found it too depressing to read. I do not think of life as a bowl of daisy's so I did finish it and learned something more about human nature and it's not always pleasant, but when we learn from what we read, it is not all bad.

I really wanted to like this book but I felt a certain disconnect to the emotions. It's almost as if Ms. Kehoe is a third party observer at times, yet at other times she's right in the moment of feeling the emotional/verbal/mental abuse. Many memoirs are powerful BECAUSE of the spare prose (especially holocaust memoirs written by people who were young at the time) but this feels like the reader is being kept at an arm's distance (not unlike how her father treated his family). I realize that NONE of the people in this story are all good or bad but there was an almost one-dimensional feeling to the sibs and Mom was either a saint or abusive in her own right for being a secret-keeper/peace-keeper at all costs.

Louise Kehoe takes the reader through a harrowing and difficult journey with no artifice. She manages to stay honest throughout which is what makes this story so moving. I would highly recommend this book over "After Long Silence" which is in the same genre but lacks the sincerity of this book.