A Father's Story

Product Information

I would start some task, working slowly through it, as I always did, and suddenly my mother would appear, and in a few quick strokes, either of mind or hand, she would finish it for me. I find it abominable that people can be so hateful to parents of murderers, especially parents like the Dahmer's who, like so many others, do what they believe is a good job raising their children and guiding them to be decent, law-abiding citizens.

Jeff intrigues me, because, the love that Lionel felt towards his son was highly relatable to me, do not take this the wrong way, I am NOT a murderer. Even the smattering of Jeffrey's childhood pictures serves as Lionel's vindication as to why this should not be blamed on his parenting. Jeff had hit bottom as a son, absolute bottom, and I could feel that he was taking me down with him, dragging me into the utter chaos that he had made of his life, and doing it publicly. He provides a unique perspective on the events that unfolded and offers a heartfelt exploration of the complexities of family, mental illness, and the devastating impact of Jeffrey's actions.The most interesting and emotionally challenging book I read during my bygone period of fascination with the sorts of issues that delve into the supremely dark sewers of human nature -- and serial killers certainly fit and (greatly define) the bill. we are the space of our isolation, we are the space defined within our limits, the limits change, the isolation remains. But for most parents the world over, these and similar worries are the only ones they will have to face.

Dahmer goes on to recite his son's litany of failure: dropping out of college after only one semester; being kicked out of the army for his alcoholism; his interest in devil worship and seances. Jeff’s condition was proven to have nothing to do with his upbringing – I don’t want parents frightened to death thinking that the little things they do or the little things they miss are going to result in them having a child that is going to cause all this pain and anguish…. Throughout the book Lionel needs to find a narrative about his son that he can live with, one that he can accept, one that resonates. Alongside 'My Friend Dahmer', this is the best book I have read about him in terms of trying to understand what drove him to do what he did.

Lionel Dahmer shares his and his son's tragic and sad story and provides some theories on why his son came to be a pedophile and necrophiliac monster, you could sense while you're reading the book that he's in unbelievable mental anguish, guilt ridden, blaming him self for it and his wife and struggling to make sense of what happened and trying to rationalize it. When he stood trial in the early 1990’s I was fairly young, and I remember equating him with Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart”… in that, a murdered body was carefully dismembered and hidden away in a home. It's heartbreaking and of course covers all the obvious and familiar terrain of how gut-wrenchingly awful Dahmer's crimes were, but with an added twist (i. Deeply thought provoking - this book provides us with more questions than answers, but in essence just confirms that no one knows a person truly if they are keen on keeping a lot of secrets.

Lionel Dahmer bravely confesses his own early experiments with perversity, a long stint as a pyromaniac culminating in almost burning down a neighbors garage, attempting to hypnotize a girl when he was thirteen in the hopes of "having [his] way with her" and his own dissociative personality that was a lesser version of what developed in his son. It seemed to me that Jeff's behavior during the preceding weeks had been more or less the same as mine had been on those occasions when I'd suddenly found myself thrust into unfamiliar surroundings. Maybe it's because secretly I am a sicko who wants to know more about the minds of serial killers and their families. J'avais vu la série quand c'est sortie (je l'ai même écouté 2 ou 3 fois) et ce livre nous permet de suivre mais avec une autre vision que celle de Jeffrey, celle de son père.

Coming to terms with the horrors of his son's killings, the father of mass-murderer Jeffrey Dahmer reveals the dark and twisted life that preceded his son's slaughter of several victims.