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Speckled People (Paperback)

by Hugo Hamilton (Author) "When you're small you know nothing ..." (more)
4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
Price: CDN$ 13.81 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over CDN$ 39. Details
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Product Description

From Amazon.co.uk

Why is it that Irish childhoods are somehow more interesting than any other? The Speckled People is yet another tale of rough and tumble childhood in Ireland in the 1950s. Instead of the hard-drinking, lovable father and weak abandoned mother of Frank McCourt's boyhood we're given the odd mix of an Irish nationalist father married to a German immigrant with a Nazi past. The premise seems to be rich and wide, but the whole book turns out to be rather intimate and personal. This is less a comment on Ireland and Germany after the war and more Hugo Hamilton's youthful journey of self discovery.

Hamilton writes in a style that can best be called "Irish immediate". Everything happens in the first person with a sudden awareness and blunt description. This style is charming at first, but wearing with time. Nevertheless, the narrator's exploration of his secret past, his comic boyhood adventures and conflicts captivate the reader, and one is carried away by the story. The interplay between the fierce Irish nationalism and the German identity of the narrator's mother is interesting, but they are only the outward sign of an inward discovery as the narrator strives to understand himself. As in any cross-cultural clash, the conflict ends in a fresh synthesis. So Hugo discovers his own identity and realises that he does not have to be either German or Irish, but a unique blend of both. --Dwight Longenecker --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

"I know what it's like to lose, because I'm Irish and I'm German," explains Hamilton in this beautiful memoir of a mixed childhood in the years after WWII. Hamilton's father says they are speckled, breac in Gaelic: spotted like a trout. With an Irish father and a German mother, Hamilton comes to Ireland as a boy in the 1950s and finds a homeland that will never fully accept him. Other children call him "Kraut" and "Nazi" and taunt him with "Sieg Heil!" salutes. Yet Hamilton is in many ways more Irish than they. His father never allows him to speak English and insists the family use the Gaelic form of their last name (O hUrmoltaigh), which many of their neighbors can't even pronounce. Despite these efforts, Hamilton knows, "we'll never be Irish enough." There is much in this Irish memoir that's familiar to the genre: the dark, overwhelming father; the tragic mother; the odd mix of patriotism and self-loathing ("the hunger strike and Irish coffee" are the country's greatest inventions, Hamilton's father says). But the book is never cliched, thanks largely to Hamilton's frankly poetic language and masterful portrait of childhood. This is really a book about how children see the world: the silent otherworld at the bottom of a swimming pool, the terror of a swarm of bees, the strangeness of a city transformed by snow. By turns lyrical and elegiac, this memoir is an absorbing record of a unique childhood and a vanishing heritage.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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When you're small you know nothing. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews

4 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.8 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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5.0 out of 5 stars Almost an Angela's Ashes, Dec 8 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: The Speckled People (Hardcover)
The cover picture and the packaging are obviously attempting to ride on the coat tails of the phenomonal success of "Angela's Ashes." Which is okay in this case, because there are many similarities, and also because this book is almost as good. Almost. It's very close. Which is to say: it's still better than just about any other memoir you could get your hands on. This is a most charming, most intuitive, most page-turning read. I loved it. You probably will too.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Speckled Like A Trout, Oct 6 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: The Speckled People (Hardcover)
Some reviewers tell the whole story in a paragraph like this, which I will refrain from doing. That would take away the entertainment value of reading the book. Suffice it to say that, of the 50+ books I read a year, this one is one of the top 5 of the year. It has a very interesting voice (a child's perspective), and story (one Irish parent, one German parent, and their children who live in Ireland after WWII) that certainly makes you think about one's place in the world and also one's perspective of history. I highly recommend reading this book.
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4.0 out of 5 stars We Knew About Losing, Aug 14 2003
By taking a rest - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)   
This review is from: The Speckled People (Hardcover)
The cover of this book has one of the most charming photographs of a young child reading. The picture has much greater relevance, as it is not simply a wonderful photograph chosen for the cover of a book, rather a picture of a young Hugo Hamilton. The author characterizes his early years in post war Europe as the child of an Irish mother and a German father by stating, "We knew about losing, we were Irish and German".

This autobiography is not like many I have read by before, especially those set in Ireland. This is not a fairy tale that is ruled by wicked characters from Dickens or a childhood that is unfamiliar with happiness. The most bizarre character that struck me was his father, an ultra nationalist obsessed with Gaelic. For this man absolutely everything secured its destruction by whether or not Gaelic was the written or spoken word. This was a man who would imperil his family financially not because there was a lack of work rather those he worked for did not address his mail in Gaelic. His children were made near recluses, as he would not allow them to interact with any children that did not come from a home that shared his strict and bizarre views of language. When his strange fixation on language was added to the prejudice the children experienced as a result of lingering German prejudice, there was plenty for this man to write about. As happens in many instances his Mother was a critical influence and she is interesting to read of as well.

This is a beautifully written work but is not one that will constantly raise your spirits. I found it to be melancholy, but a very worthwhile use of your reading time.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Nationalism and Nazism
Memories of an unhappy Irish childhood marred by an eccentric and often ludicrous father who, although the son of a British sailor and (apparently) not a native Gaelic speaker,... Read more
Published on July 17 2003 by D. P. Birkett

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