On July 23, 1991, Milwaukee chemist Lionel Dahmer discovered – in addition to the rest of the world – that his kid Jeffrey was a killer who, over a period of many years, had actually performed some of the most awful crimes ever committed. As the trial advanced, and the crimes of his kid were graphically detailed, Lionel began to put himself in the dock next to his child. In the troubling weeks following Jeff’s conviction, he continued his descent towards that harrowing point at which the line of his own life inevitably converged with his child’s. This book is not the story of Jeffrey Dahmer at all, however of a dad who, by sluggish degrees, came to realize the saddest reality any parent may ever know: that following some unknowable procedure, his kid had somewhere crossed the line that divides the human from the monstrous. It is both a touching household narrative and a haunting narrative – the account of a man who never ever relented in his effort to fathom the deepest quarters of his boy’s conditions, even as they pointed to his own. It is a file on the nature of fatherhood, the origins of madness, and the role of kinship in the legacy of evil.
No comments:
Post a Comment