In This Dark House: A Memoir - Softcover

Kehoe, Louise

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140253378 ISBN 13: 9780140253375

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1997

Synopsis

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.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

“A marvelously lucid account of a savage childhood, and of the family conspiracy that engendered it.”
—Anita Brookner

“Well constructed and beautifully written, [with] an emotional honesty which generates its own kind of lasting truth.”
—The Times Literary Supplement

About the Author:

LOUISE KEHOE is a writer and garden designer who lives in New Hampshire. In This Dark House won the National Jewish Book Award in 1995 and, in the United Kingdom, the Jewish Quarterly–Wingate Prize in 1997.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0140253378
• ISBN 13: 9780140253375
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 48