Lore Segal’s Legacy

LORE SEGAL’S FIRST NOVEL, Other People’s Houses (1964), is narrated from the perspective of the protagonist, named Lore Segal, who escapes Nazi Germany via the Kindertransport at the age of 10. Once in England, Lore (the character who may also be the author) lives with foster families until she eventually makes her way to the Dominican Republic and finally to New York, following the same trajectory as her namesake. In his 1975 book The Autobiographical Pact, Philippe Lejeune argued that the difference between a novel and an autobiography is that in the latter, the writer, narrator, and protagonist share a name and identity, uniquely positioning the genre to tell the reader “the truth.” Yet Segal, writing 10 years before Lejeune articulated this theory, had already begun to question genre boundaries, seeing herself as a “novelist” who wrote Other People’s Houses “autobiographically,” but not as an authority on “the truth.” In fact, contrary to Lejeune, Segal sees her dual position as both protagonist and author working to place “the truth” entirely beyond her grasp.