Product Description

On July 23, 1991, Milwaukee chemist Lionel Dahmer discovered - along with the rest of the world - that his son Jeffrey was a murderer who, over a period of many years, had carried out some of the most ghastly crimes ever committed. As the trial progressed, and the crimes of his son were graphically detailed, Lionel began to place himself in the dock beside his son. In the torturous weeks following Jeff's conviction, he continued his descent towards that harrowing point at which the line of his own life inevitably intersected with his son's. This book is not the story of Jeffrey Dahmer at all, but of a father who, by slow degrees, came to realize the saddest truth any parent may ever know: that following some unknowable process, his child had somewhere crossed the line that divides the human from the monstrous. It is both a touching family memoir and a haunting memoir - the account of a man who never relented in his effort to fathom the deepest quarters of his son's afflictions, even as they pointed to his own. It is a document on the nature of fatherhood, the origins of madness, and the role of kinship in the legacy of evil.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #410179 in Books
• Published on: 1995-07-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 270 pages

Customer Reviews

A deep insight into a father's struggle for reason
This book left me feeling incredibly sad. I was left with great insight into what this man was struggling to come to terms with. Many possible explanations for what happened are debated in reference to events that occured during Jeffrey Dahmer's life. Being that Lionel Dahmer, his father, can no longer see any of the events of his son's childhood as independent or irrelevant in relation to what was to happen, there seems to be a great sense of loss and in one sense, dread- he often appears to blame himself for what happened to his son. This is the base for the story, giving an account of the most extreme sense of what it takes to be a parent. He professes to love his son, struggling to understand and forgive him, yet feeling a strong sense of duty as a father and duty to his family and to what is right. He challenges his own conscience and the lines between right and wrong, where he found the right path, his son didn't. His struggle for reason is evident through inconsistencies and contradictions in his beliefs over what happened to his son. One moment it appears he believes his son was born bad and the next moment it seems he believes his son was made bad. He looks at his own face in the mirror, his shyness, initial poor intellectual and social development, odd fascinations (such as playing with matches) and sees that his son and his development are very similar. But then, he also blames his wife's problems in pregnancy and the medication she was under at the time. There are many books about the world of psychopathic serial killers, some of these focus on the emotional poverty and fantasies of the central character, some focus on what the central character does and the awful crimes they commit, some books focus solely on the victims who are brutalised. This book can be placed elsewhere.

Great for a new perspective
"A Father's Story" ranks as one of my favourite reads to date. It offers a new perspective on not just Jeffrey Dahmer, but on serial killers. In this book, not only are you able to learn alot about Jeffrey as a child, teenager, and young man, you are able to see him in a new light, not as a 'monster', but as a person, and a son. Its a book I would recommend to anyone, not just people who are interested in the specific subject matter, because I think it bares a valuable sentiment and it's worth a read by us all. The only reason I gave this book 4 **** instead of 5 was because I thought at certain points, perhaps Lionel Dahmer was a bit.....self-indulgent. Such as when he says that he is probably the ONLY one in world who understands the fear that Jeffrey must have felt when he awoke to find he was lying on a dead man, a man he had killed, because he himself had 'had a dream' where he killed someone and when he awoke, for a second he thought that it was real. But that is my only critisism of an otherwise great book that must have taken a lot of courage for Mr Dahmer to write.

Heart rending.
Even if you're not interested in the dahmer case, this book is moving. Following through from childhood, it chronicles everything you never knew about Dahmer, but from a different angle. Most interesting is the way the author blames himself for his sons problems although, as we can see, society was as much to blame for the breakdown of morals.

I would recommend this book to any parent or child as well as anyone interested in the case. It is guaranteed to not only pull your heartstrings, but to act as a warning to us all. A fascinating read.